Moving away from cars, over to agriculture:
Twenty-nine countries at the World Trade Organization criticized the United States on Wednesday for reintroducing export subsidies on U.S. dairy products, calling the handouts a dangerous retreat into protectionism and warning of "subsidy wars."
...
Australia, on behalf of agricultural exporting nations, said the announcement Saturday by U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack of subsidies for 102,000 U.S. tons (91,000 metric tons) of mainly milk powder, butter and cheese was unfair to countries trading fairly, and potentially damaging to global economy's recovery.
The U.S. view was that the subsidies were consistent with WTO rules:
Vilsack said over the weekend that President Barack Obama's administration "remains strongly committed" to the pledge by the leaders of the Group of 20 major economies last month "to refrain from protectionist measures." He said U.S. subsidies were "fully consistent with our WTO commitments."
But this didn't satisfy anyone:
"This is not the point," retorted [Peter Grey, Australia's WTO ambassador]. "If other economies follow the example set by the U.S. and the EU and raise tariffs, domestic support and export subsidies toward their maximum WTO commitment levels, it would undermine the effectiveness and credibility of the WTO system."
One final point. I've posted before on the meaning of "protectionism." The article has a good definition of protectionism, from Brazil's Roberto Azevedo:
Protectionism "includes any form of government intervention, such as subsidies, which artificially tilts the field in favor of domestic enterprises, to the detriment of competitors abroad."
That's pretty much how I would define it as well.
