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As the ink was drying on one of the world’s biggest trade deals, signed in Uruguay this month, and hailed as a milestone for the global economy, anger was brewing thousands of miles away in France. Under the agreement between the EU on one hand, and Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay on the other, tariffs will be greatly reduced and the amounts of imports and exports allowed will be increased.
The deal would affect almost 800 million people. It comes as a marked contrast to Donald Trump’s plans to greatly increase protectionism when he returns to the White House next month.
Alix Heurtault, a 34-year-old French farmer, says she is worried about her future if the planned agreement goes ahead. “I fear that the deal will mean making ends meet becoming even more difficult for farmers like me,” she says.
Ms Heurtault grows sugar beet, wheat and barley on a 150-hectare farm in the small village of Villeneuve-sur-Auvers located 60km south of Paris. She says that the deal would see French farmers badly hit in order to help EU manufacturers.
“The deal is a threat for European farmers, as the world’s most competitive agricultural sector gets access to their market, but we’re talking about a tiny amount of liberalisation spread out over a long period of time,” says Uri Dadush, a research professor for trade policy at the University of Maryland in the US.
Prof Dadush adds that “the deal is an opportunity to push for much needed market-orientated reform in the heavily-subsidised EU agricultural sector, and Mercosur’s highly-protected factory sector”.
David Cayla, lecturer for economics at Angers University in western France and member of the left-wing collective “The Dismayed Economists”, doubts the EU will be able to enforce higher standards in Latin American countries.
“Antoine Gomel, who in 2017 took over his family’s 24-hectare chicken and beef farm in a small village near Boulogne-sur-Mer in northern France, says that opposing the trade deal is about saving the French countryside.
Farms keep disappearing leaving our villages deserted – the deal will only accelerate that,” says the 42-year-old.
French President Emmanuel Macron is listening, and has described the trade deal as “unacceptable in its current form”.
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