后金融危机时代下的新贸易保护主义及中国外贸的策略选择——以中、美轮胎特保案为例

当前全球经济正处于企稳复苏的关键时期,抵制各种形式的贸易保护主义比任何时候都显得更为迫切。后金融危机下愈演愈烈的新贸易保护主义必须引起我们的高度重视,我们必须积极主动进行妥善有效的应对。本文以中、美轮胎特保案为例,据此提出在新贸易保护主义不断升温下中国外贸的策略选择。     

保卫民族产业与内向型经济:中国崛起的唯一选择

历史经验说明,保护主义和内向型经济是发展中大国经济崛起的必由之路。英国通过保护主义造就了产业革命的辉煌,美国通过典型的内向型经济实现了对英国的赶超。那种把保护主义看作是落后的代名词,认为保护主义无法解决技术进步问题并导致企业不能承受国际竞争的看法与历史经验大相径庭。我国以自由贸易、加入全球产业价值链和依赖外国直接投资为核心的出口导向型经济发展模式是目前我国经济陷入诸多经济困境的主要根源,这使我们不得不重新认识保护主义和内向型经济发展战略的基本经济学原理。为了从目前的经济困局中突围出来,并重新开启中国经济崛起之路,提出了保卫民族产业,实现中国经济崛起的十大战略方针。     

全球经济再平衡下的贸易保护主义对中国出口的挑战

全球贸易在2009年经历了22%的降幅以后,经济逐渐呈现回升态势,但是由于失业率上升,政治压力和社会问题接踵而至,越来越多国家以"经济安全"和保护本国虚弱产业为由加强政府对经济的干预,贸易保护主义日渐盛行。在未来相当一段时期内,随着中国商品结构的升级和对外贸易的进一步扩大,国际对华贸易保护主义案例在数量上将保持上升趋势,涉及的领域将继续扩大,对华贸易保护主义的形式将趋于多样化。对此,我们需要保持清醒的认识,及早未雨绸缪。     

Measuring the Economic Costs and Benefits of the EU

The EU has pursued protectionist policies not merely in food but also in manufacturing at the customs union level. In services it has not dismantled much of the existing national protectionism. The economic costs are calculated here at some 3% of GDP for the UK and some 2% for the rest of the EU. Added to its social interventionism, these costs suggest that the EU has put political integration before economic efficiency. This paper draws heavily on my book with Vidya Mahambare and Eric Nowell (Minford et al., 2005). I am grateful for helpful comments to Kim Huynh, Michele Fratianni and other participants at the IU 2006 conference in Fratianni’s honour. I contributed this paper in recognition of many pleasurable discussions with Michele over the years on this and many other topics. JEL Classification Numbers: F13, F14     

A Note on Laurence Seidman’s Article

Mihail Manoilescu was among the foremost intellectual figures of the interwar period in Romania. He was known as a politician and central banker, as well as an economist. From the very beginning of his theoretical and practical career, or at least from the late 1920s onward, Manoilescu’s ideas and theories (especially his corporatist theory) were marked by clear continuity and consistency based on the theory of protectionism grounded on productivity differences. By developing his model — an alternative to the theory of comparative advantage — Manoilescu endeavored to show the need for protectionist measures to promote the development of peripheral countries. His defense of protectionism is usually presented as clumsy and founded on an incorrect method, even if he is often recognized as the forerunner of the theory of unequal exchange and the dependency theory. Few scholars note the similarity of Manoilescu’s theory with Karl Marx’s labor theory. This paper contributes to validating Manoilescu’s conclusions, the soundness of which we test here by reconstructing the theory from a Marxian perspective. A reconstruction of this type offers new possibilities of evaluating his theory and a better understanding of its contributions and limitations.     

Do U.S. citizens support government intervention in agriculture? Implications for the political economy of agricultural protection

The persistence of agricultural protectionism throughout the world is intriguing given the widely recognized benefits of free trade. The political economy literature over the last decades has considered groups’ interest, politicians’ preferences, and their interactions within domestic politics as the primary forces driving agricultural protection. Yet, a growing body of studies suggests that it would be judicious to weigh in consumers’ or taxpayers’ perspectives in deciphering the nature of agricultural protection. This study examines U.S. citizens’ preferences about government intervention in agriculture and trade. Results show that they are in strong support of agricultural protection and their perceptions of national food security, family farms, environmental sustainability, and multifunctionality of agriculture play a significant role in shaping their support/opposition toward government intervention. The conventional political economy literature theorizes that consumers or taxpayers would oppose public policies that increase their tax burden; however, in the case of the farm sector, they have little incentive to voice their objections given the costs of farm programs are spread across a large number of consumers and taxpayers. U.S. citizens’ support for government involvement in agriculture as reported in this and other prior studies does not lend support for such political economy explanation.     

Bureaucratic integration and regional specialization in China

Fiscal decentralization introduced as part of China's economic reform since 1979 has unleashed strong incentives for China's local governments to pursue economic development, but the same incentives have also led to local protectionist policies inhibiting the process of regional specialization. This paper focuses on the constraints or freedom with which local governments can implement their protectionist policies. Using a panel data of 29 China's regions over the time period of 1985–1997, we find that China's political system of bureaucratic integration (specifically, concurrent appointment of local government officials in the central government) imposes constraints on the local governments from practicing protectionism. We also find that the effectiveness of local protectionist policies is limited by market competition, specifically, competition from foreign-invested firms operating in China and foreign imports. Our results on the role of local protectionism remain robust to controls for the regional variations in the size of the economy and the stage of economic development.     

Anatomy of Russia’s market segmentation1

Based on a relationship between price difference and demand difference among locations, the role of various market frictions in causing segmentation of the Russian goods market is analysed. The spatial sample covers most of Russian regions (70 of the 89); the data are annual, spanning 1992 to 2000. Spatial disconnectedness of regions is found to be responsible for about 70 percent of the average price differential, while the rest is caused by ‘artificial’ impediments to market integration such as regional protectionism, organized crime and intra‐region shipping conditions.     

贸易保护主义对WTO的挑战及其应对

金融危机下贸易保护主义的泛滥不断冲击着以贸易自由化为目标的多边贸易体制。从WTO成员方在经济危机期间的表现,我们既看到了对承诺的背离、对原则的抛弃和对规则的滥用,也看到了对自由贸易的坚持和对贸易保护主义的纠正。本文试图以此次经济危机为背景来审视WTO规则及其实施机制,对贸易保护和贸易保护主义进行法律区分界定,考察贸易保护主义在WTO法实施过程中的具体体现,探寻WTO规则在经济艰难时期抗击贸易保护主义中存在的问题,研究应对贸易保护主义的法律路径。     

中国企业全球攻略:“三位一体”廓清贸易障碍

当今形势下,全球化战略成为中国企业的必然选择。中国企业应从战略高度上,以全球为市场、以学习为手段,来积蓄国际化经营的知识经验和管理技能,培育能带来持久竞争优势的战略资源与核心能力,构筑全新的竞争优势。但金融危机爆发以来,国际贸易保护主义重新抬头,各国因自身利益而产生的贸易摩擦越来越多。作为世界贸易大国,受国际国内双重因素影响,我国也面临着国际贸易摩擦的高发期,贸易摩擦日益成为阻碍我国企业全球化战略发展的消极因素。为有效破解国际贸易壁垒,妥善处理贸易摩擦问题,推动国内企业向国际型企业成功转变,必须从国家、行业、企业三个层面入手化解国际贸易摩擦。