ABSTRACT
The United States has been an advocate for subsidy discipline and countervailing duties since the beginning of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade negotiations. The primary reason for this is that the United States generally provides a lower level of subsidies—by any definition—than most other trading countries. As US trading partners are quick to point out, the United States has provided significant agricultural subsidies for decades and provides smaller subsidies to develop certain technologies. Some of the United States programs were originally introduced to counter foreign subsidies; others had specific policy goals. These subsidies occasionally gain some press attention, largely due to the promotion efforts of the politicians involved, but in economic terms, they tend to be relatively small. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has tracked relative subsidies in major developed countries for decades and has consistently ranked the United States at the bottom of the list of subsidizers.
