What Do We Know About Preferential Trade Agreements and Temporary Trade Barriers?
Two of the most important trade policy developments to take place since the 1980s are the expansion of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers, such as antidumping, safeguards, and countervailing duties. Despite the empirical importance of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers and the common feature that each can independently have quite discriminatory elements, relatively little is known about the nature of any relationships between them. This paper surveys the literature on some of the political-economic issues that can arise at the intersection of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers and uses four case studies to illustrate variation in how countries apply the World Trade Organization's global safeguards policy instrument. The four examples include recent policies applied by a variety of types of countries and under different agreements: large and small countries, high-income and emerging economies, and free trade areas and customs unions. The analysis reveals important measurement and identification challenges for research that seeks to find evidence of systematic relationships between the formation of preferential trade agreements, the political-economic implications of their implementation, and the use of subsequent temporary trade barriers.
Summary: | Two of the most important trade policy
developments to take place since the 1980s are the expansion
of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade
barriers, such as antidumping, safeguards, and
countervailing duties. Despite the empirical importance of
preferential trade agreements and temporary trade barriers
and the common feature that each can independently have
quite discriminatory elements, relatively little is known
about the nature of any relationships between them. This
paper surveys the literature on some of the
political-economic issues that can arise at the intersection
of preferential trade agreements and temporary trade
barriers and uses four case studies to illustrate variation
in how countries apply the World Trade Organization's
global safeguards policy instrument. The four examples
include recent policies applied by a variety of types of
countries and under different agreements: large and small
countries, high-income and emerging economies, and free
trade areas and customs unions. The analysis reveals
important measurement and identification challenges for
research that seeks to find evidence of systematic
relationships between the formation of preferential trade
agreements, the political-economic implications of their
implementation, and the use of subsequent temporary trade barriers. |
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