In U.S., Cotton Cries Betrayal

If Daniel Sumner's actions be treason, as some of his critics contend, then he is glad the most has been made of it.

Sumner, an agricultural economist at the University of California at Davis, played a key role in an international trade case that is shaping up as one of the most significant defeats the United States has ever suffered on the trade front. An analysis that he wrote helped frame a preliminary decision issued two weeks ago by a World Trade Organization panel, which held that the federal subsidies paid to U.S. cotton farmers violate WTO rules because they cause overproduction, drive down world prices and impoverish farmers in developing countries.

Since Sumner served as a paid consultant for Brazil, which brought the case against Washington, he is being reviled as a traitor by some U.S. farmers. Leaders of some farm groups, furious at Sumner for helping a foreign government win a victory that could end agricultural subsidies in their current form, are vowing to retaliate by cutting off funding for other work that he does.

"He joined forces with the enemy to cut the heart out of our farm program," said Don Cameron, vice chairman of the California Cotton Growers Association and chairman of the California Tomato Growers Association Inc. He said such an act was "unethical" because Sumner is an employee of California's public university system. "There are research projects that he's been involved with in the past that we'll direct elsewhere."

To opponents of farm subsidies, the treatment Sumner is getting underscores what they have been saying all along: that well-organized and well-heeled interest groups benefit from the federal payments and will go to great lengths to protect the system despite evidence of the harm inflicted on some of the world's weakest citizens. The World Bank and other international institutions have long complained about the impact of subsidies on Third World farmers, but Sumner's cotton analysis was unusually detailed and precise.

"He's done a real service, not just to Brazil, but to the world, by clarifying the role that U.S. farm programs are having globally," said Gawain Kripke, senior policy adviser at Oxfam, the international aid group. Although U.S. officials have said they will likely appeal the WTO ruling, Oxfam hopes the decision will increase pressure on the United States, the European Union and Japan to scrap subsidies that effectively guarantee a minimum price for certain crops. The rich nations' reluctance to cut assistance to their farmers has been a major sticking point in global negotiations to lower trade barriers worldwide.

Dale E. Hathaway, a former undersecretary of agriculture, said Sumner "did an honest job of trying to assess the impact of these subsidies, and there are some people who are not particularly enthused about having a serious job of assessing the impact, because it makes them look bad." Noting that Sumner served as assistant secretary of agriculture for economics in the administration of President Bush's father, Hathaway added that it is "ironic that Dan, who is a good, conservative, traditionally trained economist . . . should be accused of all these things that people are talking about."

The man at the center of this furor is, by the accounts of both fans and critics, a pleasant, soft-spoken academic. Sumner said that like many economists at universities, he is not favorably disposed toward farm subsidies in general, because he sees little rationale for protecting farmers from market forces, and he believes that some of the goals subsidies are supposedly aimed at -- preserving rural communities, for example -- could be achieved much more effectively by using other programs.

But that wasn't his motivation for accepting the Brazilian request last year to analyze the impact of the cotton program, he said. Nor, he maintained, was it the consulting fee, which he said was in the "tens of thousands" of dollars, because he turns down many such opportunities. Rather, he said, "my view was, and is, that it's important to have the very best information" for major cases in which the Geneva-based WTO adjudicates disputes between nations.

"I think the WTO is incredibly important, for the world as a whole and for agriculture," he said. "I think it helped the decision-making to have someone familiar with U.S. farm programs, and who had analyzed them for a while, to be involved in the case." The only way to do that, he added, was to work for one side or the other, and though he would have gladly given the same information to the U.S. Agriculture Department or trade representative's office, "I suspect they wouldn't have wanted it used."