The biggest losers (and winners) from US trade liberalization

Many development experts worry that continuing reductions of tariff levels in high-income countries will limit trade flows from developing countries that benefit from preferential trade programs because of ‘preference erosion.’ Using a panel of US import data between the years of 1997 and 2005, I find that reductions in preference margins will significantly diminish imports of some products, particularly from lower-middle and low income countries; for example, a 1% reduction in the US tariff on a product that is currently imported duty-free from developing countries will decrease imports of that product from lower-middle income countries by an average of 2.6%. However, many products produced by developing countries fail to qualify for preferential tariffs, thus a gradual reduction in all US tariff rates is expected to have only a modest impact on trade flows from developing countries.     

美国征收碳关税对福建省出口影响的实证研究

福建省最大的出口目的地美国宣称自2020年起,拟对中国等国家进口的产品征收碳关税,这无疑会对福建省的出口贸易产生重大冲击。基于30/60/85美元/吨CO2三个级别的碳关税,实证评估美国征收碳关税对福建省主要10种出口产品的影响。受冲击大的产品绝大多数是碳密集型产品,例如非金属矿物制品等,而受冲击小的产品绝大多数是非碳密集型产品,例如鱼、甲壳及软体类动物及其制品等,但一些非碳排放密集型的产品也会受到严重冲击,从而揭示出碳关税对福建省出口的冲击并非完全取决于产品的碳排放强度。最后,从政府和企业层面提出完善碳排放权交易试点和优化出口产品结构等对策建议。     

Declining Protection in Developing Countries: Fact or Fiction?

This paper explores whether and to what extent evident trade reform, falling average tariffs and rising exports in recent decades overstate the extent to which protectionism has declined in developing countries, especially low‐income developing countries. It identifies remaining significant protection, especially of final manufactured goods; this being associated with the presence of peak tariffs, escalating tariff structures by stage of production and replacement of old forms of non‐tariff protection with new instruments of non‐tariff protection. It also identifies significant protection arising from high international trade costs induced by inefficiencies in transportation, ports and customs, and from the growth of exports to preference‐receiving, export markets.     

Trade Creation and Diversion Effects of Regional Trade Agreements: A Product‐level Analysis

This paper examines the impacts of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on trade flows at product level, with a particular focus on trade creation and diversion. Based on estimation of the gravity equation, dealing with the zero trade flows and endogeneity bias problems, we analyse the impacts of various types of RTAs involving 67 countries for 20 products during the 1980–2006 period. We find that RTAs among developing countries tend to cause trade diversion compared with RTAs among developed countries. Taking the higher external tariff rates of developing countries compared with developed countries into consideration, our results suggest trade diversion is likely to be caused by remaining high tariffs on imports from non‐members. In addition, we find the trade creation effect for many products in the cases of Customs Unions and plurilateral RTAs. These results imply that trade creation would be caused by various factors besides the reduction in tariff rates. Based on these results, we draw a policy implication that external tariff rate reduction is an important factor in avoiding trade diversion in the formation of RTAs, in particular for RTAs among developing countries, while a large number of members and the common external tariff appear to be important for generating the trade creation effect.     

Friends like this: The impact of the US–China trade war on global value chains

This paper considers the indirect impact the recent tariff increases between the United States and China can have on third countries through links in global supply chains. We combine data from input–output relationships, imports and tariffs, to calculate the impact of the tariff increases by both the United States and China on cumulative tariffs paid by third countries. We show that the tariff hikes increase cumulative tariffs for other countries and thus hurt trade partners further downstream in global supply chains. We also show that this is particularly important for tariff increases on Chinese imports in the United States. These are likely to be used as intermediates in production in the United States, which are then re-exported to third countries. The most heavily hit third countries are the closest trade partners, namely the EU, Canada and Mexico. We estimate that the tariffs impose an additional burden of around 500 million to 1 billion US dollars on these countries. China's tariffs on US imports have less of an effect.     

碳关税对我国出口贸易的影响及对策研究

欧美的拟征碳关税作为一种新型的贸易壁垒,必将会对我国出口贸易和经济发展产生重要影响。本文全面分析这些影响。认为必须发展绿色贸易和低碳贸易,加快企业"走出去"步伐,以跨越碳关税的贸易壁垒,促进我国出口贸易及可持续发展。     

Trick or Treat? Development Opportunities and Challenges in the WTO Negotiations on Industrial Tariffs

Negotiations on industrial tariffs in the current WTO work programme have turned out to be surprisingly difficult. On the one hand, developing countries, particularly in Africa, are concerned about the potential negative effect on their industrial development of developed country efforts to push them into deep cuts in applied tariffs: after the disillusion of the Uruguay Round, promises of welfare gains seem unconvincing. On the other hand, a number of the more complex formula proposals for tariff‐cutting make it difficult for participants to evaluate what they have to do compared with what they hope to receive. The developing countries may achieve greater exports and welfare gains from the more ambitious proposals, but computations show that these also imply greater imports, lower tariff revenues, some labour market adjustments and reduced output in some politically sensitive sectors. Some way of assisting the developing countries in coping with these adjustments is required to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the negotiations.     

Does Aid for Trade Enhance Export Performance? Investigating the Infrastructure Channel

There are few empirical studies assessing the effectiveness of aid for trade as regards trade performance. Furthermore, existing work does not test which are the channels through which aid for trade has an impact on trade performance. We address this question using a two‐step empirical analysis. Relying on an export performance model, we first test whether institutions and infrastructure, our two potential channels of transmission, are significant determinants of export performance. Second, we test the impact of aid for trade sectoral flows on the previously detected determinants of export performance. We show, as part of the first step, that the infrastructure channel is a highly significant determinant of export performance, whereas the institutional channel turns out to have a limited positive impact on developing countries’ export performance. Furthermore, we show, from the second step, that aid for infrastructure, once instrumented, has a strong and positive impact on the infrastructure level. As a result, we find that a ten per cent increase in aid for infrastructure commitments per capita in developing countries leads to an average 2.34 per cent increase in the exports over GDP ratio. It is also equivalent to a 2.71 per cent reduction in tariff and nontariff barriers. These results highlight the high potential impact of aid for trade on developing countries’ export performance throughout the infrastructure channel.     

Do tariffs matter for the extensive margin of international trade? An empirical analysis

With disaggregate tariff data we study the impact of changing tariffs on the range of goods countries export to the United States. Our probits with country and good effects show tariffs tend to have a statistically significant but small impact: at best 5% of the increasing extensive margin for 1989-1999 and 12% for 1996-2006 is explained by tariff reductions. This suggests the extensive margin has not amplified the impact of tariffs on trade flows to such an extent that the relatively moderate tariff reductions since WW II can explain the strong growth of world trade.     

US–Brazilian cotton policies

Brazil filed a lawsuit with the WTO against the United States for providing cotton production and export subsidies, and the WTO ruled in favour of Brazil. Brazil threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs if the United States does not comply with the WTO rulings. After a prolonged litigation stretching from 2002 to 2010, both countries agreed to a negotiated settlement wherein the United States paid Brazilian cotton producers to compensate for any adverse effects. This study develops a political economic model to theoretically analyse US cotton policies, Brazil's threat of retaliatory tariffs and the negotiated settlement between the two countries. The theoretical results show that the volume of cotton output, supply price response, politicians' apathy for the public welfare, elasticities of excess supply/demand and the magnitude of US transfers play a crucial role in determining US policies. This study contributes to the literature by being the first to model political economic aspects of the complex system of trade and domestic policies in the cotton industry using a three-country framework, tariff retaliation and transfers between the countries.     

美国反倾销贸易效应的实证分析

基于美国1998—2007年对外反倾销案的动态面板数据,应用一阶差分广义矩估计方法(SYS-GMM)考察其关税和反倾销对被诉国出口贸易和贸易份额的影响,结果表明:美国关税和反倾销措施在被诉国和被诉行业中都存在贸易破坏效应和贸易转移效应,其中,对中国反倾销的贸易效应最大;比较关税与反倾销措施对被诉国出口的影响,发现美国实施反倾销措施的贸易破坏效应和贸易转移效应远大于关税,表明反倾销措施已经成为美国取代传统关税控制进口的重要贸易政策。     

Determinants of workers’ remittances: An empirical investigation for a panel of eleven developing Asian economies

We explore the key motives of migrant workers’ remittances from abroad for 11 major Asian migrant‐sending countries. Using panel regressions, we find that relative higher growth rate, interest rate and capital market returns of home over the host, investment, financial deepening at home have significant impact on remittance inflows into Asia, along with higher per capita incomes and international crude oil prices. With incorporation of per capita incomes and lagged impact of remittances, we observe an emergence of consumption motives to remit. Therefore, we conclude that both investment and altruistic motives are the driving forces for remittances inflows into the Asian economies.     

WTO subsidy rules and tariff liberalization: evidence from accession of China

Countries increasingly rely on subsidies to assist their producers leading to concerns about their potential misuse. The WTO regulates its members’ subsidies by defining subsidies that are permissible, as well as by providing means to retaliate against subsidies of partner countries if these subsidies hurt one's interest. However, these subsidy rules might have an unintended effect. As both subsidies and tariffs are substitute instruments of protection, tighter subsidy rules might lead to a decrease in the pace of tariff liberalization. In this paper, we present first empirical evidence in support of this prediction. Using China's accession to the WTO in 2001 as a case study, we show that China's accession to the WTO was associated with a relative increase in its tariffs for products that faced a higher threat of retaliation against subsidies. More importantly, we also show that increases in tariff were larger in products with higher potential costs imposed by retaliation. Finally, we include several robustness tests as well as conduct two counterfactual exercises to verify that the results we obtain are indeed due to perceived threat of retaliation against subsidies.     

Politics of free trade areas: tariffs versus quotas

In this paper we compare and contrast the political viability of bilateral Free Trade Area (FTA) Agreements in the presence of tariffs and quotas. Assuming that the government maximizes a weighted sum of welfare and producer profits, we show that the political viability of FTAs varies according to whether trade restrictions take the form of tariffs or quotas. A key result is that whereas an FTA is unambiguously rejected by one of the countries under a tariff, it may be endorsed by both trading partners under a voluntary export quota or import quota that provides equal protection as the tariff.     

Trade liberalization, wage inequality, and endogenously determined nontraded goods

We examine the boundary between traded and nontraded goods as a channel for trade to impact factor prices. In a two-country, two-factor, continuum-good model, tariffs generate a range of nontraded goods. A tariff reduction has a direct effect to expand a country’s import set and an indirect effect through terms of trade to expand its export set. We show that the export expansion can dominate the import expansion, raising the relative demand for the factor intensively used in production. The result is useful in explaining observed rising wage inequality in developing countries following trade liberalization.     

论适度保护关税税率

面对日益加速的经济全球化进程,各国仍然在普遍使用关税措施来保护本国产业的发展.在这方面,发展中国家需要解决的问题是设定一个适度的保护关税税率,以让国内产业既有生存和发展的空间,同时又有足够的竞争压力来提高效率.根据国内与国际平均生产成本的差异来确定保护关税的税率是一个可行的办法.进一步削减关税是我国加入WTO后需要承担的义务,应当按照适度保护关税的原则把平均关税的税率稳定在一个合理的水平上,并根据国内不同产业的发展状况,提供必要而有效的保护.     

Heterogeneous firm-level responses to trade liberalization: A test using stock price reactions

This paper presents novel empirical evidence on key predictions of heterogeneous firm models by examining stock market reactions to the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement of 1989 (CUSFTA). I derive testable predictions for a class of models based on Melitz (2003). Using the uncertainty surrounding CUSFTA's ratification, I show that the pattern of abnormal returns of Canadian manufacturing firms was strongly consistent with predictions related to export (U.S.) tariff reductions, but less so with predictions related to import (Canadian) tariff reductions. Lower Canadian tariffs did have an effect through the implied reduction in intermediate input tariffs, however.     

Establishment heterogeneity,exporter dynamics,and the effects of trade liberalization

We study the effects of tariffs and iceberg trade costs in a two-sector dynamic variation of the Melitz (2003) model extended to include a sunk cost of exporting, establishment-level uncertainty in productivity, capital accumulation, and material usage. We calibrate the model to match both cross-sectional and dynamic aspects of US producers related to export participation and the establishment lifecycle. We find a tariff equivalent of fixed export costs of 30 percentage points. We also find that a sizeable share of export profits is a return to the organizational capital from investing in export capacity rather than creating an establishment. We use the model to estimate the effect of reducing tariffs on welfare, trade, and export participation. We find that eliminating an 8 percent tariff increases the ratio of trade to GDP from 3.9% to 7.4% and raises welfare by 1.02%. Along the transition, consumption overshoots its steady state, even as trade and the capital stock grow gradually, so that the change in steady state consumption understates the welfare gain. Models without a dynamic export decision generate more gradual aggregate transition dynamics and smaller gains from trade. Capital accumulation and material usage are important sources of the welfare gains to trade.     

Tariff wars in the Ricardian Model with a continuum of goods

This paper describes strategic tariff choices within the Ricardian framework of Dornbusch, Fischer, and Samuelson (1977) using CES preferences. The optimum tariff schedule is uniform across goods and inversely related to the import demand elasticity of the other country. In the Nash equilibrium of tariffs, larger economies apply higher tariff rates. Productivity adjusted relative size (≈ GDP ratio) is a sufficient statistic for absolute productivity advantage and the size of the labor force. Both countries apply higher tariff rates if specialization gains from comparative advantage are high and transportation cost is low. A sufficiently large economy prefers the inefficient Nash equilibrium in tariffs over free trade due to its quasi-monopolistic power on world markets. The required threshold size is increasing in comparative advantage and decreasing in transportation cost. I discuss the implications of the static Nash-equilibrium analysis for the sustainability and structure of trade agreements.     

Establishment heterogeneity,exporter dynamics,and the effects of trade liberalization

We study the effects of tariffs and iceberg trade costs in a two-sector dynamic variation of the Melitz (2003) model extended to include a sunk cost of exporting, establishment-level uncertainty in productivity, capital accumulation, and material usage. We calibrate the model to match both cross-sectional and dynamic aspects of US producers related to export participation and the establishment lifecycle. We find a tariff equivalent of fixed export costs of 30 percentage points. We also find that a sizeable share of export profits is a return to the organizational capital from investing in export capacity rather than creating an establishment. We use the model to estimate the effect of reducing tariffs on welfare, trade, and export participation. We find that eliminating an 8 percent tariff increases the ratio of trade to GDP from 3.9% to 7.4% and raises welfare by 1.02%. Along the transition, consumption overshoots its steady state, even as trade and the capital stock grow gradually, so that the change in steady state consumption understates the welfare gain. Models without a dynamic export decision generate more gradual aggregate transition dynamics and smaller gains from trade. Capital accumulation and material usage are important sources of the welfare gains to trade.