With the Doha trade round in danger of slipping from our grasp, it has become commonplace to assert that the food crisis, while a tragedy, is a shot in the arm for the talks. In this Financial Times op-ed, Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya find that only one such argument passes muster—the fact that high food prices should soften U.S. opposition to lower agricultural subsidies, thereby relaxing key constraints on the final compromises necessary to reach an agreement on agricultural liberalisation.
