Farm Subsidies, Duties, Quotas, and Tariffs

Farm subsidies, tariffs, and quotas are policy instruments used by the United States to support agricultural prices and to protect agriculture from foreign competition. Subsidies are payments made to farmers to support crop prices. Tariffs—or customs duties—are taxes levied on goods when they pass across national boundaries, usually made on imported goods and collected by the government of the importing country. Quotas are a government-imposed limit on the amount of a product that can be grown for the domestic market (production quotas) or, in international trade, on how much of a specific product can be imported or exported (quantitative restrictions).