U.S. Said to Reach Deal With Brazil Ending Cotton Dispute

By Alan Bjerga

Photographer: Ty Wright/Bloomberg

A girl wearing cowboy boots sits on a bail of cotton during harvest in East Carroll... Read More

The U.S. and Brazil have reached an agreement resolving a trade dispute over cotton subsidies that has bedeviled the two nations for more than a decade, according to an American government official.
The accord will be signed today in Washington with U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack present, according to the official, who asked not to be identified before a formal announcement. The deal comes days before elections in Brazil and may ease tensions sparked by revelations last year that the U.S. had spied on
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
The cotton dispute dates to a World Trade Organization complaint filed in 2002 by Brazil over U.S. subsidies to cotton growers. Brazil, which claimed the practice disrupted trade, won the case and was allowed to levy $830 million in penalties against U.S. companies that the U.S. staved off by agreeing to pay Brazil’s cotton industry $147 million in annual aid.
Those payments were ended in October 2013 as the result of U.S. budget cuts, prompting threats from Brazil that it would slap tariffs on U.S. companies in response. A new farm bill that Congress approved in February included modified cotton programs designed to mollify Brazil’s concerns.