![]() ![]() The WTO said that China had to allow the sale, and China agreed to let it go through. GARCIA: The case took three years to work out, which, as these things go, is actually pretty quick. It lets countries which are upset with other countries about tariffs and import licenses try to work things out. HERSHIPS: The World Trade Organization has its own kind of court, the Dispute Settlement Body. GLAUBER: The U.S., actually, during the last couple of months of the Obama administration took China to the WTO to the settlement body and said, hey, China's not playing by the rules. ![]() So what do you do if you are the United States? Well, you do the same thing that a lot of parties with a grievance do. China was importing a tiny bit of rice from other countries. GARCIA: At least, not from the United States. GLAUBER: China just wasn't importing rice. farmer hoping to sell some of your rice crop to China, things just were not moving. ![]() China was not making it easier or cheaper to import foreign rice like it had promised. So this deal happens, and rice farmers are getting psyched. GARCIA: Joe Glauber is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute and a former chief economist at the U.S. JOE GLAUBER: In the rice world, that's a lot of rice. So as part of the deal it cut when it joined the WTO, China agreed to make it easier and cheaper specifically for 5.3 million tons of foreign rice to come into the country. And for the already established members, when a country as big as China joins, it can mean all these potential new customers. If you join, you get to benefit from all these special trade deals with the other member countries. The job of the WTO is to oversee trade between different countries. That is the year China joins the World Trade Organization. So this story really gets its start back in 2001. And while administrations were changing, trade policies were shifting, rice importers and exporters on both sides of the ocean were left waiting. HERSHIPS: The plan for China to buy rice from America, it has been cooking for a really long time. China is the world's largest producer of rice - 200 million tons a year it produces. And I think we should all just pause here for a minute because we are talking about China buying rice from America. JIM GUINN: So that's the first sale of rice to China in recent history.ĬARDIFF GARCIA, BYLINE: Jim Guinn is with the USA Rice Federation, a trade association. SALLY HERSHIPS, BYLINE: Very quietly last winter, China agreed to buy some rice from the U.S. Planet Money reporters Cardiff Garcia and Sally Herships explain why China agreed to buy two shipping containers of rice from the United States. But there's another tariff fight with China happening behind the scenes with a lot of money at stake, a battle over rice. The world is fixated on the U.S.-China trade war. ![]()
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