European Community Enlargement: Impact on U.S. Corn and Soybean Exports

This paper utilizes the framework of an Armington model to analyze the impact of the European Community enlargement on U.S. corn and soybean exports. Results indicate that the enlargement has a significant and negative impact on U.S. corn exports to the new EC members. Increases in U.S. soybean exports are much smaller in volume terms. Declines in U.S. corn export prices outweigh the insignificant increases in U.S. soybean export prices and therefore accentuate U.S. losses. However, the U.S.-EC agreement on their enlargement dispute cut net losses of U.S. corn and soybean exports to Spain and Portugal by about a third.