Preferential Liberalization,Antidumping, and Safeguards: Stumbling Block Evidence from MERCOSUR

There is not yet consensus in the trade agreements literature as to whether preferential liberalization leads to more or less multilateral liberalization. However, research thus far has focused mostly on tariff measures of import protection. We develop more comprehensive measures of trade policy that include the temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies of antidumping and safeguards; studies in other contexts have also shown how these policies can erode some of the trade liberalization gains that arise when examining tariffs alone. We examine the experiences of Argentina and Brazil during the formation of the MERCOSUR over 1990–2001, and we find that an exclusive focus on applied tariffs may lead to a mischaracterization of the relationship between preferential liberalization and liberalization toward non‐member countries. First, any “building block” evidence that arises by focusing on tariffs during the period in which MERCOSUR was only a free trade area can disappear once we also include changes in import protection that arise through TTBs. Furthermore, there is also evidence of a “stumbling block” effect of preferential tariff liberalization for the period in which MERCOSUR became a customs union, and this result tends to strengthen upon inclusion of TTBs. Finally, we also provide a first empirical examination of whether market power motives can help explain the patterns of changes to import protection that are observed in these settings.     

Trade policy under the GATT/WTO: empirical evidence of the equal treatment rule

Abstract. A fundamental difference between multilateral trade agreements like the GATT and WTO and a preferential agreement is the multilateral agreements’ inclusion of a most‐favoured‐nation principle. Though MFN requires that members implement policies that provide equal treatment to all GATT/WTO countries, how far do members actually follow the MFN principle when so required? We empirically investigate a sample of GATT/WTO trade disputes and the effect of successful dispute settlement negotiations on the disputed product trade of third country exporters to the defendant country. We document evidence of trade liberalization consistent with defendant countries successfully applying the equal treatment rule. JEL classification F13     

反倾销措施的贸易救济效果评估

本文利用1997—2004年中国反倾销案例8位数税则号的涉案产品数据,考察了反倾销措施引起的指控对象国和非指控对象国的贸易模式的变化,在此基础上提出了反倾销行为贸易救济效果的证据。检验结果表明,中国反倾销措施对指控对象国的进口有明显的“贸易限制效应”;不仅征税案例,即使是无损害结案的反倾销指控仍然对指控对象国的进口贸易有重要影响,即反倾销具有“调查效应”;但是涉案产品可能在指控对象国和非指控对象国之间转移,这种“贸易转移效应”部分削弱了反倾销措施的保护效果;总体上看,反倾销仍然起到了救济本国产业的作用,因为无论是指控对象国还是非对象国的进口价格都会上升,从而控制了中国涉案产品的进口总量。     

The Domestic Politics of Institutional Design: Producer Preferences over Trade Agreement Rules

What explains variation in the design of international institutions? Recent literature shows that providing members with opportunities to shirk their contractual obligations actually promotes agreement formation and durability. Yet, in spite of these benefits, institutions continue to exhibit wide variation in the “flexibility” of their rules. I show that, in the context of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), the benefits of permitting escape are enjoyed unevenly across the market. In particular, import‐competing industries gain from the protection that escape clauses provide while their export‐dependent counterparts bear the costs. This asymmetry creates domestic political competition over agreement design between the two traded sectors of the market. I explore this competition using new data on the design of 330 PTA agreements since 1960.     

International supply chains and trade agreements

There is a growing literature that examines the role of trade agreements on the formation of international supply chains. The evidence indicates that in general countries that share trade agreements are more likely to develope cross-border supply chains. In this analysis, we argue that in order to examine the effects of trade agreements on the formation of supply chains between two countries, it is not enough to analyse the impact of the trade agreements that the two countries share but it is also important to assess the impact of the trade agreements that they share with third countries. Using data on trade in value added for 129 countries, we show empirically that about 40% of the potential increase in trade in value added induced by a trade agreement between an importing country and a sourcing partner is wiped out by each additional trade agreement signed by the importing country with third nations in which the sourcing partner is not a member. The result has important implications for regions seeking to develop international supply chains but in which the process of integration is highly fragmented.     

Understanding the Welfare Implications of Preferential Trade Agreements

This paper examines various implications of preferential trade agreements, namely customs unions and free trade areas, in the context of a multicountry general equilibrium model. The model is calibrated to represent countries with symmetric endowments, and aggregate and disaggregate welfare change measures are used to quantify the welfare effects of preferential trade agreements. It is found that free trade areas are better than customs unions on welfare grounds for the world as a whole. Welfare decompositions suggest that a significant fraction of the welfare changes is explained by the volume-of-trade effect for both types of preferential trade agreements.     

Does Preferential Trade Benefit Poor Countries? A General Equilibrium Assessment with Nonhomothetic Preferences

We develop a Ricardian model of trade with nonhomothetic preferences to analyze preferential trade agreements (PTAs) among countries of different stages of economic development. The richer a country is, the more likely will PTAs improve its terms of trade, also when it is a non‐member. Rich non‐member countries are also less likely to incur welfare losses from PTAs. PTA membership only guarantees welfare gains for countries that are too poor to import the goods rich countries produce. For all other countries, the welfare effects of joining PTAs depend on the world income distribution and on the strength of comparative advantages.     

PREFERENTIAL TRADE AGREEMENTS AND MULTILATERAL TARIFF COOPERATION*

Are preferential trade agreements (PTAs) building or stumbling blocks for multilateral trade liberalization? I address this question in an infinitely repeated tariff game between three countries engaged in intraindustry trade under oligopoly. The central result is that when countries are symmetric, a free trade agreement (FTA) undermines multilateral tariff cooperation by adversely affecting the cooperation incentive of the nonmember whereas a customs union (CU) does so via its effect on the cooperation incentives of members. However, when countries are asymmetric with respect to either market size or cost, there exist circumstances where PTAs facilitate multilateral tariff cooperation.     

反倾销被诉贸易效应的实证分析与比较——基于1998-2008年动态面板数据模型的SYS-GMM估计

在整理全球反倾销案件的基础上,通过收集相关贸易数据,利用1998-2008年被诉反倾销案件为样本建立动态面板数据模型,实证分析了12个主要国家和地区被诉反倾销的贸易破坏效应和贸易转移效应,通过SYS-GMM估计进行回归估计得到稳健性结果。实证结果表明,反倾销措施对贸易额和出口市场份额的影响远大于关税措施的影响,成为多数国家限制进口、保护本国国内产业的主要贸易政策。反倾销对中国、日本、中国台湾和俄罗斯的负面影响较大。最后考察反倾销对产业竞争力的影响发现,反倾销申诉和反倾销措施对申诉方的产业竞争力有显著的提升作用,并且反倾销措施的影响远大于反倾销申诉的影响。     

Differences in the determinants and targeting of antidumping: China and India compared

Despite both being developing countries, China and India have markedly contrasting patterns in their use and targeting of antidumping (AD) measures. We explore the factors driving AD use by these two countries, considering in turn macroeconomic, strategic and other determinants. We find more regular or systematic features of AD use by China, while India displays a less systematic pattern of AD use. Economic growth, AD club effect and free trade agreement participation are shown to constrain AD use by China. Compared to India, AD use by China is also more sensitive across industries. Furthermore, China targets developed countries more than developing countries, while India is less discriminating with respect to the country type it targets.     

Trade Liberalization and Antidumping: Is There a Substitution Effect?

Many nations have undergone significant trade liberalization even as they have increased their use of contingent protection measures. This raises the question of whether some of the trade liberalization efforts, at times accomplished through painful reforms, have been undone through a substitution from tariffs to non‐tariff barriers. Among the new forms of protection, antidumping is the most relevant. This paper examines whether the use of antidumping is systematically influenced by the reduction of applied sectoral tariffs in a sample of 29 developing and six developed countries from 1991 through 2002. Evidence is found of a substitution effect only for a small set of heavy users of antidumping among developing countries. There is no similar statistically significant result for other developing countries or developed countries. Robust evidence is also found of retaliation and deflection effects as determinant of antidumping filings across all subsamples.     

Are Preferential Trade Agreements with Non-trade Objectives a Stumbling Block for Multilateral Liberalization?

In many preferential trade agreements (PTAs), countries exchange not only reductions in trade barriers but also cooperation in non-trade issues such as labour and environmental standards, intellectual property, etc. We provide a model of PTAs motivated by cooperation in non-trade issues and analyse its implications for global free trade and welfare. We find that such PTAs increase the cost of multilateral tariff reductions and thus cause a stumbling block to global free trade. This occurs because multilateral tariff reductions decrease the threat that can be used in PTAs and thus the surplus that can be extracted from them. By explicitly modelling the interaction between preferential and multilateral negotiations, we derive a testable prediction and provide novel econometric evidence that supports the model's key prediction. The welfare analysis shows that the current World Trade Organization rules allowing this type of PTAs may be optimal for economically large countries, thus the model can predict the rules we observe. We also analyse alternative rules that constitute a Pareto improvement.     

The US–China Phase One trade deal: An economic analysis of the managed trade agreement

In light of the recent tit-for-tat trade dispute between China and the US, interest in quantifying the effects of the so-called Phase One agreement has risen. To this end, this paper quantifies the impact of the asymmetric managed trade agreement using such a multi-country open-economy dynamic general equilibrium model. Besides assessing the direct implications for China and the US, this paper analyzes trade diversion effects. The model-based analysis finds noticeable positive (negative) impacts of the agreement for the US (China) as well as negative spillover effects for countries not directly affected by the managed trade deal due to trade diversion. The impact of possible future trade agreements is also examined.     

Beyond trade creation: Preferential trade agreements and trade disputes

This study investigates the effects of preferential trade agreements (PTA) on bilateral trade disputes. We construct a unique and comprehensive dataset on inter-country trade disputes from 1995 to 2007. The dataset covers 110 countries and 1,162 bilateral country-pair trade disputes. Using this dataset in a gravity-type model of trade dispute analysis, we find that countries belonging to the same PTA tend to experience fewer trade conflicts among themselves than with non-member countries. By studying various types of PTA with different dispute settlement mechanisms, we further find that the dispute-reducing effect only comes from PTA with specific provisions on dispute settlement mechanisms. Moreover, the effect is stronger if those PTA explicitly stipulate that members can also resolve their disputes via the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. However, having PTA that do not address how members should resolve their disputes may lead to more dispute initiations than in cases without PTA.     

Chinese firm and industry reactions to antidumping initiations and measures

China has been the subject of large numbers of both antidumping initiations and measures. This article explores the reactions of Chinese firms and industries to these actions by using dynamic system GMM estimator and industrial panel data on all Chinese firms in the industry, foreign firms operating within China and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) for aggregated firms group between 1997 and 2007. We find that antidumping actions by developed and developing countries negatively impact industrial profits and employee and firm numbers and also exports, but improve labour productivity. We also find that different kinds of firms show different responses. All firms together in an industry react to antidumping the most, and foreign and SOE firms show a much smaller response. Further, antidumping effects from different countries are different. Developed countries’ antidumping actions have more negative impact than developing countries’ actions; the effects of US actions are different from the European Union’s.     

Do South–South preferential trade agreements undermine the prospects for multilateral free trade?

Due to trade diversion, there have been concerns expressed over the proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) that include South countries. In this paper, we compare welfare across different geographic configurations of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) and examine their implications for the stability of multilateral free trade. While North–North PTAs do tend to yield higher global welfare than South–South PTAs, a single South–South FTA may make free trade more sustainable than any other single agreement. With pre‐existing North–North agreements and a large enough cost asymmetry between regions, an additional South member or a new South–South agreement always makes free trade harder to sustain.     

Does it Matter Who You Sign With? Comparing the Impacts of North–South and South–South Trade Agreements on Bilateral Trade

Free trade agreements (FTAs) lead to a rise in bilateral trade regardless of whether the signatories are developed or developing countries. Furthermore, the percentage increase in bilateral trade is higher for South–South agreements than for North–South agreements. The results are robust across a number of gravity model specifications in which we control for the endogeneity of FTAs (with bilateral fixed effects) and also take account of multilateral resistance in both estimation (with country‐time fixed effects) and comparative statics (analytically). Our analytical model shows that multilateral resistance dampens the impact of FTAs on trade by less in South–South agreements than in North–South agreements, which accentuates the difference implied by our gravity model coefficients, and that this difference becomes larger as the number of signatories rises. For example, allowing for lags and multilateral resistance, a four‐country North–South agreement raises bilateral trade by 53% while the analogous South–South impact is 107%.     

Size inequality,coordination externalities and international trade agreements

Developing countries now account for a significant fraction of world trade and two-thirds of the membership of the World Trade Organization (WTO). However, many are still individually small and thus have a limited ability to bilaterally extract and enforce trade concessions from larger developed economies even though as a group they would be able to do so. We show that this coordination externality generates asymmetric outcomes under agreements that rely on bilateral threats of trade retaliation – such as the WTO – but not under agreements extended to include certain financial instruments. In particular, we find that an extended agreement generates improvements in global efficiency and equity if it includes the exchange of bonds prior to trading but not if it relies solely on ex post fines. Moreover, a combination of bonds and fines generates similar improvements even if small countries are subject to financial constraints that prevent them from posting bonds.     

Do South‐South trade agreements increase trade? Commodity‐level evidence from COMESA

Abstract .  South-South trade agreements are proliferating. Yet the impact of these agreements is largely unknown, as existing North-North and North-South micro-level studies are likely to yield misleading predictions for South-South trade agreements. This paper estimates the impact of COMESA on Uganda's imports between 1994 and 2003. Detailed import and tariff data at the 6-digit Harmonized System level are used for more than 1,000 commodities. Based on a difference-in-difference estimation strategy, the paper finds that – in contrast to evidence from aggregate statistics – COMESA's preferential tariff liberalization has not considerably increased Uganda's trade with member countries, on average, across sectors. The effect, however, is heterogeneous across sectors. Finally, the paper finds no evidence of trade-diversion effects.     

双边自由贸易协定深度异质性及区内全球价值链效应*——基于GVC修正引力模型实证研究

双边自由贸易协定深度嬗变，全球价值链引致贸易形成机制和形式变化，使得自由贸易区理论基础、影响机制和功能效应更替。本文基于对双边自由贸易协定深度演化以及相较于其他区域贸易协定的深度异质性研究，将公司产权理论纳入自由贸易区理论框架，形成双边自由贸易区内全球价值链效应的多维理论机制，并且运用适应全球价值链发展的修正引力模型和世界银行的贸易协定内容数据库对理论机制假设结论进行实证检验。研究发现：双边自由贸易协定总深度对区内成员国之间的全球价值链关联产生正向影响，相较于贸易相关条款深度而言，投资相关条款深度影响更大。此外，自由贸易区对象国差异性也会影响双边自由贸易区全球价值链效应的发挥。根据对象国不同选择差异化的自由贸易区深度在双边自由贸易区构建中重要性凸显。本文将为全球价值链背景下中国构建高标准自由贸易区网络的对象国选择、自由贸易区模式选择等提供政策参考。