On Thursday, U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) introduced two bills designed to address the Government of India’s rampant subsidization of food products, including rice, pulse crops, wheat, peanuts, and shrimp. Senator Cassidy’s legislation recognizes that, with this massive government support, India has flooded global markets and decimated food producers in the United States.
In one of the two bills, Prioritizing Offensive Agricultural Disputes and Enforcement Act (or the Ag Disputes Act), Senator Cassidy proposes the creation of a joint task force on agriculture trade enforcement that would recommend meaningful responses to the Indian Government’s subsidy programs. Through these substantial market distortions, India has developed a forty percent share of the global market for rice, has become the world’s largest producer of pulse crops, and is now the world’s second largest producer of wheat, peanuts, and cotton.
In the other bill, the India Shrimp Tariff Act, Senator Cassidy explains that the Government of India imposes a customs duty of thirty percent on shrimp imports with an additional ten percent social welfare surcharge on imports. At the same time, the United States imposes no basic duties on imports of shrimp into this country.
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