The impact of US fresh milk production standards on dairy trade

We examine the impact of proposed changes in US legislation to allow greater use of concentrated dairy products when producing fresh milk commodities. Although this change will allow dairy producers to partially circumvent high tariff-rate quotas (TRQs) for fresh milk products, changes in dairy production and trade are small, reflecting limited use of concentrated dairy products as inputs to fresh milk products. We also show that, at the global level, high trade barriers on other dairy commodities do not have a significant impact on trade in concentrated milk products. We conclude that trade negotiations should focus on the removal of tariffs and TRQs.