Do countries free ride on MFN?

The Most-Favored Nation (MFN) clause has long been suspected of creating a free rider problem in multilateral trade negotiations. To address this issue, we model multilateral negotiations as a mechanism design problem with voluntary participation. We show that an optimal mechanism induces only the largest exporters to participate in negotiations over any product, thus providing a rationalization for the Principal supplier rule. We also show that, through this channel, equilibrium tariffs vary according to the Herfindahl-Hirschman index of export shares: higher concentration in a sector reduces free riding and thus causes a lower tariff. Estimation of our model using sector-level tariff data for the U.S. provides strong support for this relationship.     

WTO视域下的美国《食品安全现代化法》

2011年1月14日美国国会通过的《食品安全现代化法》显著提升了美国食品安全监管标准,该法第三章对进口食品安全监管体制所做新规,如国外供应商认证程序、自愿合格进口商计划、授权取得食品进口证书等将对美国食品贸易体制发生重大影响,其影响将溢出到整个国际食品贸易市场。这部法律总体上符合WTO法律制度,但若干具体规则有违反WTO最惠国待遇原则之嫌。目前尚未有涉及FSMA的WTO诉讼案件,因此其相符性还有待WTO争端解决机制的实际验证。     

Bilateral agricultural and commodity agreements—protectionism made to measure

While multinational agreements are subject to lively discussions and their negotiations the frequent topic of our news, little is known about bilateral agreements. This despite the fact that their number has greatly increased since the worldwide recession. So alone the USA and the EC have both signed over a hundred bilateral trade agreements to protect them against imports or safeguard their export interests.     

商检条款不容忽视——如何防范外商利用商品质量问题拖欠货款

商检条款是进出口贸易合同中的一项重要条款,然而又往往是买卖双方在订立合同时容易忽略的条款。本文阐述了商检条款的重要作用,订立商检条款所涉及到的主要问题,并提出了完善商检约定规避外贸风险的建议。     

The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement: Relevance,Content and Policy Implications

On 6 July 2017, after four years of negotiation, the EU reached an agreement with Japan over the main elements of a comprehensive free trade agreement. The breakthrough came at a time when progress on multilateral trade negotiations at the global level seemed out of reach and EU bilateral trade agreements faced strong public opposition. This paper examines the content of the new agreement with a view to global trade dynamics and assesses its main trade policy implications.     

国际贸易中劳工标准执行手段对发展中国家福利后果比较

贸易和劳工标准问题近二十年来一直是国际贸易谈判中的热点问题,其对发展中国家出口的影响日益凸显。文章在局部均衡的框架之内侧重分析了发达国家不同的劳工标准执行手段对发展中国家福利的影响,并在此基础上提出了对策建议。     

WTO电子商务谈判与数字贸易规则博弈

2019年1月,76个WTO成员签署《电子商务联合声明》,确认启动与贸易有关的电子商务议题谈判,旨在制订电子商务/数字贸易领域的国际规则。本文在对谈判成员、提案内容和规则议题进行梳理的基础上,研究分析了数字贸易规则博弈焦点和国家间立场分歧。研究发现:从成员构成看,发达经济体是谈判的主导者,发展中经济体参与谈判和提交提案的比例偏低;从议题设计看,谈判内容远超以往电子商务谈判,更多聚焦于跨境数据流动、源代码披露等数字贸易规则议题;从博弈焦点看,谈判核心包括数据要素、市场空间、监管治理、技术发展与收益分配5个方面,发达经济体和发展中经济体的诉求差异巨大。在此形势下,中国既要加快完善国内体制机制,营造有利于数字经济和数字贸易发展的环境,又要积极参与数字贸易国际规则制订,提出中国规则主张。     

Formula Approaches for Market Access Negotiations

Most of the large tariff reductions achieved in multilateral trade negotiations have involved tariff–cutting formulas such as the ‘Swiss’ formula. However, wide variations in initial tariff rates between active participants call for new approaches under the Doha Development Agenda. This paper surveys a range of formula options and examines both targeted and flexible applications of the Swiss formula that target tariff escalation and peaks, and would allow policy makers to directly target how far they will move towards free trade, while providing some flexibility for trading off reductions in peak tariffs against reductions in lower–tariff sectors.     

Productivity Versus Employment: Quantifying the Economic Effects of an EU–Japan Free Trade Agreement

The European Union and Japan recently entered into negotiations over a bilateral free trade agreement intended to stimulate growth and create wealth. Since customs duties are already low, the success of the liberalisation process hinges on the elimination of non‐tariff barriers. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on two possible liberalisation scenarios: a less ambitious liberalisation and a comprehensive liberalisation. In contrast to classic studies, our paper builds on the modern trade literature, accounting for the dominance of intra‐industry trade in both economies and the existence of heterogeneous firms. Furthermore, we model a search‐and‐matching labour market, allowing us to quantify employment effects of trade liberalisation. We find that a comprehensive liberalisation increases Japanese GDP by 0.86 per cent, whereas the EU experiences only an additional 0.21 per cent of real GDP growth. Most of the growth in real GDP is due to firms' efficiency gains, whereas unemployment is reduced by only a small amount. Other world regions experience small reductions of GDP due to trade diversion effects.     

论我国自由贸易区谈判中的环境和劳工保护问题

区域贸易协议已经成为包含贸易和大量非贸易议题的综合性协议,我国在自由贸易区谈判中遇到的难题之一就是如何应对环境和劳工这样的非贸易议题。如果采取不接受在贸易协议中谈判与贸易相关的这类议题的策略,就必然要在贸易上付出更多的代价来换取谈判对手的妥协。文章主张积极应对这类谈判,但可以根据我国的国情和利益,研究和采取灵活的和非强制性的政策工具。     

The New Southern African Customs Union Agreement

From its origins in 1910 the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) has been characterised by striking asymmetries in policies, levels of development and administrative capacity. Following the demise of apartheid in 1994, the five member countries (Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland) began negotiations to reform the SACU. Eight years later, a new Agreement was signed in October 2002. In this paper, we outline the main characteristics of the 2002 Agreement and assess whether it addresses the criticisms of the preceding arrangement. Most importantly, the 2002 Agreement introduces shared decision-making and provides for a sustainable revenue-sharing arrangement. But varying levels of trade policy capacity along with policy divergences between the members present new challenges. Moreover, the exclusion of Services, Intellectual Property Rights and Singapore issues gives the 2002 Agreement a somewhat jaded appearance. Nevertheless, the reconstituted SACU could form the core of a larger regional customs union that would facilitate a realignment of the existing regional organisations. This will depend on the ongoing trade negotiations with both the EU and the United States. These negotiations will also put pressure on SACU to address excluded issues and reduce cross-border transaction costs in order to realise the benefits from economic cooperation.     

Regionalisation of Trade and Regionalism in Trade Policy – Patterns, Strategies and Impact

Against the backdrop of the stalled Doha Round the emphasis in the trade policies of nations and country groupings is widely expected to shift further away from multilateral trade negotiations and towards the conclusion of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). This article sketches the network of international trade flows and shows how it has increasingly been matched by a worldwide web of PTAs, the nature of which has changed over time. PTAs are discussed in their regional context and assessed with a view to their economic impact and their implications for the multilateral trading system.     

Tokyo round tariff reductions and the less developed countries

This paper presents new evaluations of the multilateral trade negotiations from the perspectives of (1) the objectives established by GATT signatories in the Tokyo Declaration, and (2) the LDCs’ goals for the negotiations. It also attempts to resolve some of the controversy over the gains and losses which MFN tariff reductions would generate for LDC exports, some but not all of which receive preferential access to advanced-country markets. The analysis indicates that even minor improvements in tariff preferences would have been superior to or have compensated for MFN tariff cuts.     

Why NAMA Liberalisation is Good for Developing Countries

This paper reviews the criticisms that have been made of the view that trade liberalisation benefits developing countries. In particular, it focuses on mainstream NGOs’ criticisms of the NAMA negotiations. The paper firmly concludes that the belief that trade liberalisation hampers development opportunities is mistaken. Developing countries have a strong interest in a successful outcome to the NAMA negotiations and the Doha Round as a whole.     

Textiles and clothing in the Uruguay Round: Current situation and future perspectives

The success of the entire Uruguay Round of the GATT depends considerably upon the success of the negotiations on the liberalization of world trade in textiles and clothing, since a number of developing countries have made their support for progress in the negotiations on services or safeguards contingent upon progress in this field. What are the present controversies? And what are the chances of resolving them in time?     

中俄贸易谈判中的跨文化因素研究

跨文化因素对国际贸易谈判的过程及结果有重要影响。因此在中俄贸易谈判过程中应克服语言文字、思维方式、风俗习惯等文化差异影响,寻找有效沟通途径,以保障谈判成功进行。     

A Meta‐Analysis of General and Partial Equilibrium Simulations of Trade Liberalisation under the Doha Development Agenda

Model‐based simulation of welfare effects is commonly used to make a case for trade liberalisation and to inform participants and stakeholders in trade negotiations. However, the simulated welfare effects of trade liberalisation vary greatly, even across studies that model similar liberalisation scenarios. This undermines confidence in the reliability of model‐based simulations. A meta‐analysis of over 100 studies that model WTO Doha Development Agenda trade negotiation outcomes is employed to identify characteristics of models, databases and liberalisation experiments that influence simulated welfare effects. Meta‐regressions produce plausible results and explain a significant proportion of the variation in simulated welfare effects in a representative sample of Doha Development Agenda trade liberalisation studies. Results also reveal that many quantitative trade policy simulation studies fail to adequately document the assumptions and data on which they are based.     

Strategic Interaction and Trade Policymaking: Formal Analysis and Simulation

This paper introduces a simple game‐theoretic model and a Monte Carlo simulation of trade negotiations with the aim of identifying the nature of the selection bias that may threaten valid inference from empirical tests relying on data from trade disputes. Insights from the formal model are used to critically engage recent empirical analyses. This model is applied more specifically to the American use of Section 301 as an instrument to prise open foreign markets. The results of the game‐theoretical model and the Monte Carlo simulation demonstrate that, despite significant statistical results, models of trade negotiations might potentially suffer from misspecification due to non‐random selection effects.     

Gatt regulation of countertrade: Issues and prospects

In light of persistent hard currency shortages, an increasing number of countries and firms resort to countertrade. Although this practice has the potential to become a major threat to the world trade framework, it is currently not specifically addressed by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). From the context of the upcoming international trade negotiations, this article explores the extent to which countertrade practices are, and should be, incorporated into the GATT framework. It analyzes current GATT jurisdiction, presents policy considerations in favor of and against the inclusion of countertrade into the GATT, and addresses practical considerations to be kept in mind during negotiations on this issue.     

The DOHA Round of Multilateral Negotiations and the Embellishing Role of the Developing Economies

Despite unanswered questions about causality, trade expansion is associated with rapid real GDP growth in the developing economies. While the WTO's mandate is to liberalize multilateral trade and support its rule-based conduct, its operations have definite development relevance. After a history of non-participation in the multilateral trading system, the developing economies began to participate in it in almost an explosive manner. Several developing economies have not only emerged as important traders since the mid-1980s but as G-21 they have also made their presence felt in the on-going multilateral trade negotiations. They made decisive contributions to the July Framework Agreement of 2004. The role of the developing economies in the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations has gone on steadily growing. It has been christened the Development Round. It deals with several areas of special interests to the developing economies—agriculture, non-agricultural market access and services being some of the more important ones—and eventually hopes to correct the imbalances in the multilateral trade regime. A successful Doha Round would indeed contribute favorably to growth, have a discernable favorable impact over the incidence of poverty and help in achieving the first MDG.