American Exports Research Articles

How Sensitive Are Latin American Exports to Chinese Competition in the U.S. Market?

How Sensitive Are Latin American Exports to Chinese Competition in the U.S. Market?

Market reactions to export subsidies

This paper analyzes the economic impact of export subsidies by investigating stock price reactions to a critical event in 1997. On November 18, 1997, the European Union announced its intention to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that the United States provided American exporters illegal subsidies by permitting them to use Foreign Sales Corporations to exempt a fraction of export profits from taxation. Share prices of American exporters fell sharply on this news, and its implication that the WTO might force the United States to eliminate the subsidy, which happened in 2004. The share price declines were largest for exporters with high profit margins and those whose tax situations made the threatened export subsidy particularly valuable. This evidence suggests that export subsidies do not merely benefit foreign consumers, but also improve the profitability of exporters, particularly those earning rents in imperfectly competitive markets.

Foreign Discrimination, Protection for Exporters, and U.S. Trade Liberalization

Current research suggests that changes in societal demands or in political institutions propelled the far-reaching reduction of American external trade barriers since the mid-1930s, yet is unable to account for the exact pattern or timing of trade liberalization. I argue instead that exporters lobby more against losses than in favor of gains of foreign market access. Whenever foreign countries inhibit access to their markets by establishing a discriminatory trading arrangement, negatively affected exporters mobilize in defense of their interests. This lobbying then prompts excluded countries' governments to engage in policies aimed at the protection of exporter interests. Applying this argument to U.S. trade policies from the 1930s to the 1960s, I demonstrate that American exporters repeatedly mobilized in response to discrimination in Europe. The resulting peaks in exporter mobilization explain the passage of the important trade bills known as the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (1934) and Trade Expansion Act (1962).

Dinâmica das exportações da América Latina: economias de escala ou dumping recíproco?

O propósito central deste trabalho é verificar se as exportações da América Latina podem ser explicadas pela presença de concorrência monopolista com economias de escala ou oligopólios com dumping recíproco. Para cumprir esse objetivo utilizou-se a técnica de estimar, econometricamente, equações gravitacionais das exportações da América Latina para produtos diferenciados e homogêneos. As informações utilizadas contêm uma extensa relação de registros de operações de exportação de 26 países latino-americanos para 136 países do mundo. Os resultados das estimações econométricas permitem obter as seguintes conclusões: (a) as exportações de bens diferenciados dos países da América Latina são explicadas por um modelo de concorrência monopolista, com rendimentos crescentes e com livre entrada; (b) no caso das exportações de bens homogêneos, elas obedecem a um comportamento de oligopólio com dumping recíproco; (c) a América Latina ainda depende das exportações de bens homogêneos que estão associados à atividade primária.

Organizational Restructuring and its Consequences: Rhetorical and Structural

In this review, we examine the idea of organizational restructuring as a conceptual tool and how it has been used to alter societal definitions and interpretations of employment. Although use of the term restructuring is relatively recent, the broad issue of changing employment conditions with which it is concerned has a long history, going back to the industrial revolution. Our main focus is a consideration of the causes and consequences of restructuring, in its more recent rhetorical and structural versions. In their pursuit of greater efficiencies, organizations adapt to the demands of increasingly global markets, and these adaptations are crucial components of what is popularly referred to as the new economy. Such developments are applauded in most economic theory, but sociologists examine both sides of their social impact, including the adverse effects and implications of such externalities as the social disruptions caused by downsizing and other organizational and corporate changes. These studies provide important contributions to our knowledge of how much, and when, promises of organizational efficiency are in fact deliverable and responsive to those affected by them. We argue that the language of restructuring is regularly used to mask, reframe, and sugarcoat economic slumps as possessing positive social outcomes. We conclude by positioning restructuring as an important component of the current American export of managerial ideology to transnational contexts and suggest further examination of how restructuring affects the culture of business in these other national contexts.

Total Lifestyle Challenge for Kids—a Research Study of the Oklahoma Native American Export Center

Total Lifestyle Challenge for Kids—a Research Study of the Oklahoma Native American Export Center

Assessing Markets for Central American Products in U.S. Ethnic Communities (The Common Beans Case)

At the end of 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that around 2.7 million people in the U.S. were of Central American origin. While this community represents a potential market for Central American exports, no study had previously been carried out to describe the ethnic markets for Central American products in the U.S. This paper describes the findings from research conducted in 2003, which suggests that people of Central American origin prefer to buy beans from their country of origin and are willing to pay a premium price for these beans. Also described in the paper is information to be used in future research for assessing the demand for food products from Latin America in U.S. ethnic communities.

Growth in demand to squeeze Latin American exports

Faced with a a growing deficit in refined products, the US is looking increasingly to Latin America for new supplies. Refiners there are responding by announcing new crude distillation and upgrading projects. The US is unlikely to feel the full benefit of such schemes, however, since demand within Latin America is rising as well.

Smarter Cooperation in Canada-US Relations?

Veronica Kitchen is a PhD candidate at Brown University. Earlier versions of this paper were presented to the Association of Canadian Studies conference 9.11: Impact and Consequences for Canada and Canadians; the International Studies Association Annual Conference; and the Institut d'etudes internationales/Woodrow Wilson Center conference Quels choix pour le Canada?/What choices for Canada? The author would like to thank Peter Andreas and Jens Hainmueller for their helpful comments on early drafts.IN RESPONSE TO THE TERRORIST ATTACKS of September 2001 and the heightened attention paid to issues of border security, Canada and the United States drafted the smart border declaration in December 2001. The declaration and its accompanying 30-point action plan called for initiatives to ensure the secure flow of people and goods, secure infrastructure, and co-ordinate enforcement and information-sharing about these objectives.(1) The smart border declaration was centred on several strategies its drafters hoped would make it a success. It included policy, technical, and bureaucratic cooperation coupled with high-level political attention, and it was implemented across a defined issue area. By its second anniversary, most of the provisions of the smart border action plan had been implemented and the process was generally declared a success.(2)There were good reasons for Canadians and their government to push for the smart border declaration as a solution to ongoing border security concerns. The imperatives of the asymmetrical relationship, the traditional concern for maintaining Canada's sovereignty and policy independence, and the need to preserve a Canadian identity that is usually defined in opposition to the United States make smart cooperation on the model of the smart border declaration viable for Canada. In this article I explain why this smarter cooperation works for Canada, then argue that it may be fruitfully extended to other cooperative initiatives in North America.THE SMART MODEL OF COOPERATIONCanada and the United States share nearly 9000 km of border and almost 2 billion Canadian dollars in trade every day. About 86 percent of Canada's exports go to the United States, and about 25 percent of American exports travel to Canada, most of them by truck. Thus cross-border trade is a lifeline for both countries, though 40 percent of Canada's GDP depends on exports to the United States, while only 2.5 percent of American GDP depends on exports to Canada. Nevertheless, it is, as American Ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci called it, Main Street North America.(3) Making the border work again after its brief disruption in the panic following the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks was a high priority for both countries.Immediately after the attacks, American customs officials entered Canada to make use of Canadian facilities when their own were overwhelmed by the search for terrorists. This sort of agency-to-agency cooperation during a crisis quickly escalated to political cooperation, with homeland security director Tom Ridge and chair of the public security and anti-terrorism cabinet committee John Manley taking the lead on addressing the need to come up with a border strategy. The smart border declaration was largely a Canadian document, drafted by the borders task force fo the Privy Council Office and finalized in consultation with American officials. The drafters structured the smart border declaration around three pillars: technical and policy cooperation; bureaucratic cooperation and high-level political attention; and implementation across a defined issue area.(4)Technical and policy cooperation aims to create mutual confidence in policies that are not necessarily identical. Where policies have common goals or are only different because they were written by different bureaucracies, they can be rewritten to be the same. However, smart cooperation recognizes that while there are many common interests between Canada and the United States, especially in the realm of security, there are legitimate reasons why policies might diverge. …

Market Reactions to Export Subsidies

This paper analyzes the economic impact of export subsidies by investigating stock price reactions to a critical event in 1997. On November 18, 1997, the European Union announced its intention to file a complaint before the World Trade Organization (WTO), arguing that the United States provided American exporters illegal subsidies by permitting them to use Foreign Sales Corporations to exempt a fraction of export profits from taxation. Share prices of American exporters fell sharply on this news, and its implication that the WTO might force the United States to eliminate the subsidy. The share price declines were largest for exporters whose tax situations made the threatened export subsidy particularly valuable. Share prices of exporters with high profit margins also declined markedly on November 18, 1997, suggesting that the export subsidies were most valuable to firms earning market rents. This last evidence is consistent with strategic trade models in which export subsidies improve the competitive positions of firms in imperfectly competitive markets.

A COMPARISON OF LATIN AMERICAN AND ASIAN PRODUCT EXPORTS TO THE UNITED STATES, 1972 TO 1999

This paper examines the evolution of Asian and Latin American trade with the United States between 1972 and 1999. It compares both the mix of each region’s exports as well as the relative prices those exports command in the U.S. market. Trade is examined across thousands finely detailed product categories, and results are summarized by industry and year. The analysis yields both expected and unexpected results. As expected, Latin America trails Asia in terms of manufacturing exports to the U.S. This result is unsurprising given Latin America’s relative land abundance and human and physical capital scarcity, which is summarized in Table 1. Asia’s relative specialization in manufacturing is manifest in several dimensions, including its rapid increase in U.S. manufacturing import market share and its more pronounced reallocation toward manufacturing exports over time. A more surprising finding is that Latin American exports command higher prices when they enter the U.S. in product markets where countries from each region compete directly. One explanation for this result is that Latin America’s exports are of higher quality than Asian exports, but, assuming quality is skill and capital intensive, that conclusion is at odds with Latin America’s comparative advantage. 1 An alternate explanation that is also supported by ‘new’ trade theory models focusing on heterogenous productivity is that Asia’s relatively low prices reflect greater productive efficiency. 2 This second explanation is also consistent with Asia’s relative increase in U.S. market share at the expense of Latin America and other countries over time. It raises the question of why any manufactures are imported from Latin America at all.

Laying the Foundation of U.S. Power in the Pacific

Book reviewed in this article: David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Involvement: American Economic Expansion across the Pacific, 1784–1900 This is the third volume in David Pletcher's trilogy on U.S. territorial and economic expansion in the nineteenth century. The first1 dealt with the acquisition of Texas, Oregon, and California, the second2 with the expansion of trade and investment in Latin America from 1865 to 1900. The volume under review covers American economic and territorial expansion across the Pacific before 1900. The process began with the voyage of the Empress of China to Canton in 1784. Through subsequent decades, the China market drew the United States to other Pacific regions, from the northwest coast of North America to Japan and India. Yet for Americans generally, the huge Pacific basin—much of it still uncharted—long remained an abstraction. American trade with China led the way to the Orient, but that trade never favored the United States. Chinese tea, porcelains, nankeens, and silks enjoyed a more lucrative market in the United States than did American exports of ginseng, sea otter and other furs, sandalwood, and opium—most acquired outside the United States—find markets in China. What hampered the China trade was the monopoly exercised by the Hong merchants in Canton and the Chinese restrictions on trade outside Canton. Following Britain's success in gaining access to other Chinese ports through its naval victory over China in the Opium War of 1839–1842, U.S. merchants in Canton pressed Congress for a naval force and a commercial treaty to give American merchants greater security against mistreatment, as well as wider access to the China market. These objectives the United States gained in the Treaty of Wang-hsia in July 1844. The treaty granted the United States all essential privileges won by the British. The American treaty became the model for all subsequent Chinese commercial agreements. The treaties never operated consistently because Westerners and Chinese never shared their ultimate intent: whether to expand Western trade or to protect Chinese interests and traditions.

Comparative home-market advantage: An empirical analysis of British and American exports

This paper derives and tests the hypothesis that a country exports relatively more of those goods for which it has a relatively larger home market, i.e., a comparative home-market advantage. This prediction is based on a two-country, many-good intraindustry trade model with economies of scale, international transaction costs and differences in expenditure shares and country size. The data from 1970 to 1987 of 26 industries of the manufacturing sector in the United States and the United Kingdom supports this hypothesis. It is also shown that the relationship between home-market size and export structure becomes significantly stronger for industries with high fixed costs. JEL no. F12, F14, F17

Are Central American export specialization patterns “sticky”?

In the national innovation systems of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), countries’ export performance is considered to be the measure of their international competitiveness. The national specificity of economic performance is shown by the “stickiness” of each country’s export pattern and indicates how much room for manoeuvre there is in each case for economic development policy initiatives. The authors introduce an analysis of the export specialization patterns of the Central American countries. They follow the methodology of innovative European research, taking into account econometric evidence of revealed symmetric comparative advantage for those countries’ exports to the OECD, the CAN database of ECLAC being used for this purpose. This global analysis shows that in these countries’ exports, agriculture- and maquila-based products with little value added have “sticky” characteristics.

Le Kennedy Round, une entreprise ambiguë

Abstract The new GATT negotiation launched by the Kennedy administration aimed at raising American exports to the Common Market and at slowing American investments in Western Europe, which had a negative impact on the US balance of payments, but also at preventing the Six from building a common foreign policy, free from American influences. According to Kennedy and his advisers, the creation of an Atlantic free trade community would secure all these ends at the same time. After the rejection by De Gaulle of the British application to the Common Market, which killed the Atlantic free trade area project, the Kennedy Round negotiation became restricted to trade matters. Since it forced European countries to define a common stand toward the United States, its unintended effect was to strengthen the unity of Europe. The Round resulted in important tariff reductions and revealed that the US economy was now fully integrated in the larger world. In spite of this, protectionist interests entrenched in the US Congress objected strongly to this new phase of trade liberalisation.

The Harmonization Game: What Basketball Can Teach About Intellectual Property and International Trade

In the recent World Men's Basketball Championships in Indianapolis, Team USA found out painfully that the international game is very different from what they play at home and that the gap between USA Basketball and the rest of the world has been closing. While their losses might have a significant impact on how the United States prepares for the 2004 Olympics in Athens and on how Americans train youngsters to play basketball, their teachings go beyond basketball. The international harmonization process is a game with different rules, different officials, and players with different visions and mindsets. By watching how players interact with rules, officials, and other players, one therefore could gain insight into globalization and the international harmonization process. This Article brings together two leading American exports - laws and basketball - and discusses how the recent losses by Team USA might offer valuable lessons on intellectual property and international trade.

Antecedents of international performance

Madsen synthesized international performance studies and identified 20 performance antecedents. Of these, 12 are unrelated to international performance or have conflicting relationships across the reviewed studies. We use his recommendations to increase the value of international performance research. First, we include seven antecedents that cover the organizational, environmental, strategic, and performance domains of his model, including components of the market orientation model. Second, earlier studies involved mostly North American and European goods exporters. This study extends previous research to the service sector in Australia. Based on responses from 181 exporters, the importance of managerial attitudes, perceived international barriers, and human resource efforts is shown to affect international performance.

Transnationalism and American Exports in an English-Speaking World

Investigating the relationship between immigration, middleman minority status, transnationalism, and U.S. foreign trade, the authors assembled a census-based data file that contains aggregate-level variables for 88 foreign-born groups by national origin between 1980 and 1990. They regressed immigrant characteristics and immigration volume upon time-lagged import/export statistics from the same 88 nations between 1985 and 1995. Results show the independent influence on exports of immigrant entrepreneurship, transnationalism, and middleman minority status. But these variables, exhaustively derived from the existing literature, had no effect on U.S. imports; they only affected exports. The authors propose that the discrepancy between imports and exports arises because of the dominance of English as a world business language. In this situation, foreigners need no help from immigrants when they export to the United States; but native-born, monolingual Americans need the help of bicultural immigrants when they export. The empirical results suggest that immigrant entrepreneurs enhance the United States' exports and thus reduce the United States' balance of payments deficit.

Marketing Modernity: The J. Walter Thompson Company and North American Advertising in Brazil, 1929–1939

Marketing Modernity: The J. Walter Thompson Company and North American Advertising in Brazil, 1929–1939

Exchange Rates and Stock Prices: Are they Related?

Changes in exchange rates are expected to affect the competitiveness of companies: a strong dollar is bad for American exporters and a weak dollar is good. Yet empirical research has not found much evidence of the expected contemporaneous correlation between exchange rate changes and stock returns even for a carefully selected set of exporting firms. Authors have attributed this apparent anomaly to market inefficiency, investor naivete, sample selection, etc. In this paper, we propose a simple extension by looking at a different implication of currency valuation. If a stronger currency signals a stronger economy then the weakness that exporting firms experience in the foreign markets is partially or fully offset by the strength in the domestic economy. We find that positive surprises in GDP announcements are typically associated with a stronger dollar supporting the dual effect of currency changes. The above result implies that a better sample to capture the impact of currency changes would likely be importing firms because an importer is helped by a stronger currency on both dimensions: lower import prices and a stronger domestic economy. Our results are consistent with this explanation. Alternate explanations for the results such as pass-through and hedging are considered.