NYTimes -- The Hypocrisy of Farm Subsidies

When Mexican corn farmers tramp through their fields behind donkey-drawn plows, they have one goal: to eke out a living. Increasingly, however, they find themselves saddled with mountains of unsold produce because farmers in Kansas and Nebraska sell their own corn in Mexico at prices well below those of the Mexicans. This is not primarily due to higher efficiency. The Americans' real advantage comes from huge taxpayer-provided subsidies that allow them to sell overseas at 20 percent below the actual cost of production. In other words, we subsidize our farmers so heavily that they can undersell poor competitors abroad. And just to make sure, we have tariff barriers in place that make it extremely hard for many third world farmers to sell in the United States. The same is true for their efforts to sell in Europe and Japan. The world's farming system is rigged in favor of the rich.

Free trade is not free trade unless it includes all products. There is more economic sense in having poorer countries have some trade barriers in order to develop an infrastructure. There is no justification for developed countries to have trade barriers and product supports.