US cotton subsidies causing turmoil
The US House has passed legislation that threatens its WTO-approved agreement with Brazil on cotton subsidies: Questions are being raised about the future of the hard-won US-Brazil cotton agreement,...
View ArticleRevenue-neutral tariff cuts are tricky business
Sallie James: [B]ecause implementing the FTAs (which will lower tariff revenue) and paying for the billion-dollar-plus TAA extension “requires” offsets, the draft language specifies in Sec. 601 that...
View ArticleHow PTAs may segment regulatory systems
Back in April, I wrote: One such danger is that FTAs might be a means for the US or EU to try to lock in first-mover advantages in shaping regulatory standards (such as technical barriers to trade)....
View ArticleCreative protectionism: Argentina requires firm-level balanced trade
The Economist describes some very unusual trade policies implemented by Argentina: Argentine manufacturers have been booming ever since the 2001 crash. Over most of that period, a cheap peso has...
View ArticleIs the NAFTA trucking dispute finally over?
A Mexican truck will make a delivery to a Dallas suburb this afternoon, thereby realizing some of the liberalization promised by NAFTA 17 years ago. WaPo: The first Mexican carrier to deliver goods in...
View ArticlePatent wars at the US ITC
Intellectual-property disputes are being adjudicated by the US International Trade Commission in the form of Section 337 disputes, which may result in US Customs banning importation of infringing...
View ArticleWTO: WTR 2012 discussion forum
The WTO’s World Trade Report 2012 will focus on non-tariff barriers. Of course, NTBs are nothing new, but they’re more relevant in a low-tariff world. Their relative opaqueness makes them more...
View ArticleThe Chinese government didn’t allocate its MFA quotas efficiently
Amit Khandelwal, Pete Schott, and Shang-Jin Wei have a nice VoxEU column describing their forthcoming AER article on Chinese textile exports under the Multifibre Arrangementquotas. In short,...
View ArticleColombia’s port-of-entry restrictions on textile imports
Here’s an unusual non-tariff barrier from a 2006 WTO complaint brought by Panama (mentioned in Eaton, Jinkins, Tybout, Xu): Second, Panama considers that, through three specific resolutions, Colombia...
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Do customs duties compound non-tariff trade costs? Not in the US
For mathematical convenience, economists often assume iceberg trade costs when doing quantitative work. When tackling questions of trade policy, analysts must distinguish trade costs from import taxes....
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