#1331 Food Fight: Mexico V. USA
Manage episode 356940389 series 3454322
Christine McDaniel / Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center George Mason University & Fellow Clayton Yeutter Institute of International Trade at the University of Nebraska
The United States appears to be getting into a food fight with Mexico… over corn!
Regulators in Mexico are moving to ban genetically re-engineered corn for human consumption. This ban would protect Mexican consumers from the perceived dangers of eating U.S. biotech corn, and would encourage the growth of Mexico’s domestic corn production. This ban of biotech corn sounds like a very good deal for Mexican farmers.
But, the biotech corn ban does not sound like a very good deal for the American farmers who have fully adopted the biotech corn technologies. In fact, the folks at the free-market Mercatus Center say the ban would cause the economic output of the United States to fall by approximately $74 billion dollars, with 32,000 annual job losses. U.S. corn growers would lose about $13.61 billion over a 10-year period and the rail industry alone would lose an additional $3.3 billion.
And so, when it comes to free trade of corn between the U.S. and Mexico, what appears to be good for the goose, does not look good for the gander. This economic food fight leads us to ask:
Can the world be made to accept the free trade of food?
47 حلقات