Thais who understood the complexity of U.S. legislative and policy processes were less puzzled over this apparent inconsistency than they were concerned over this appearance of a general trend in U.S. policy formations for protective and special economic interest considerations to dominate foreign policy interests. Meanwhile the rice problem look another turn as poor 1987 rice crops in many countries led to a recovery of world rice prices and in early 1988 concern over a possible shortage of exportable rice in Thailand. In the longer run, the outcome of the current "Uruguay" round of multilateral negotiations under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) will, one hopes, set liberalizing rules for world agricultural commodity trade. In this framework, Thailand is a very active participant in a group of like-minded grain-exporting countries; the positions of the United States,which took the lead in pressing for the inclusion of agricultural commodity trade in a GATT round for the first time, is parallel to Thai interest as well