Round Of Trade Negotiations Research Articles

The Evolution of Digital Trade from the North American Trade Agreement to the United States Mexico Canada Agreement

The Evolution of Digital Trade from the North American Trade Agreement to the United States Mexico Canada Agreement

What do I get? How do states’ negotiation alternatives influence the concessions they receive in multilateral negotiations?

When will states receive concessions in multilateral negotiations? And on which issues are those concessions likely to be received? I highlight two factors that influence the likelihood a state will receive concessions on an issue in multilateral negotiations: (1) the degree to which the issues linked together in the negotiation are “differently valued” by the negotiating states, and (2) the costliness of states’ “best alternative to a negotiated agreement” on each individual issue. The former creates the opportunity for an exchange of concessions; the latter creates the incentive for that exchange to occur. It is the interaction of having more differently valued issues on the table and having a more costly best alternative to a negotiated agreement on an issue that makes a state more likely to receive concessions on that issue. This argument stands in contrast to the standard negotiation literature, which has shown that having a more beneficial best alternative to a negotiated agreement will yield greater concessions. I argue that these contradictory assertions exist because there are two types of best alternatives to a negotiated agreement that must be taken into account – one at the negotiation level and those at the issue-specific level. The current literature has tended to focus on the former while I focus on the latter. I test my argument on an originally constructed dataset of concessions states received in the Uruguay Round trade negotiations of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. For each issue in the Round, I coded the costliness of each state's issue-specific best alternative to a negotiated agreement and the level of concessions it received on that issue. The results provide insights into the workings of multilateral negotiations.

РЕФОРМА ВСЕМИРНОЙ ТОРГОВОЙ ОРГАНИЗАЦИИ: ПРОБЛЕМЫ И ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ

The world trade organization (WTO) has faced a number of challenges related to changing trends in the global trading system. In addition to the differences that have accumulated during the Doha round of trade negotiations, new issues need to be discussed, such as the regulation of e-Commerce, the revision of intellectual property rules, the need to tighten the rules on subsidies and public procurement, and improving the effectiveness of the Appeals body. Due to the rapid economic growth of a number of developing countries, it is necessary to redistribute the benefits provided and review the status of the organization's member countries. Outdated WTO rules do not meet the new challenges of the 21st century. The main problems faced by WTO members are analyzed, the positions of developed and developing countries are highlighted, and ways to resolve the organization's crisis are presented.

Trump Administration Is Ready to Carry “The Burden of Leadership” in the WTO

Trump’s administration is configured negatively to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which it considered ineffective and is allegedly used by some United States trading partners to achieve trade and political objectives contrary to American interests. Some American claims to the WTO, at least partially, are shared by other members of the organization. The process of improving international trade rules is clearly not keeping up with the pace of change in the world. Signs of the WTO erosion are evident in advocating increased use of trade policy instruments outside the organization under the pretext of protecting national interests and national security, the introduction of new trade sanctions and other restrictive measures, the crisis of the system for the settlement of trade disputes. The absence of multilaterally agreed arrangements on the reform of the WTO encourages the Trump Administration to act unilaterally. The United States stated their right to apply the restrictive measures against the WTO members under the pretext of protecting national security, insisting on the need for a selective approach to decisions taken not in their favor, probe to eradicate undesirable for this country most favored nation trade regime (MFN), and accentuate the flaws of multilateralism in trade negotiations. Against this backdrop, the Trump Administration announced its willingness “to lead the international efforts” for the reformatting of the WTO with a view to restoring its sole political leadership in the organization. However, aggressive, reckless and uncoordinated with the partners of the United States actions untie hands to other countries to protect their own interests, both within the legal framework of the WTO and beyond, making the risks of returning to the priority of force factor on the principle of “everyone for himself ”. The future of the multilateral trading system, the scope and depth of these reforms will largely be determined by the coherence or uncoordinated actions of key players - the United States, China and the EU. While the contribution of other countries, including Russia, could also be significant. The priorities will be the prevention of further escalation of trade conflicts and preparation of the conditions for a new round of trade negotiations.

Trade and fisheries subsidies

Many renewable resource sectors are heavily subsidized and yet the resources are also seriously depleted. World Trade Organization members included subsidies in a key renewable resource sector (fisheries) in the Doha round of trade negotiations, which subsequently stalled. This paper develops a simple model to show why prospects for a deal on fisheries subsidies may be difficult. Typically international spillover effects create incentives among exporters to negotiate reductions in subsidies: one country's subsidy worsens other exporters' terms of trade. These incentives may not exist in fisheries for 3 reasons. First, open access fishery supply curves are backward bending and so if fisheries are depleted, subsidies raise prices (by reducing sustainable harvesting) and improve other exporters' terms of trade. Second, ecological constraints put an upper bound on sustainable harvesting. This means that subsidies that increase employment may have no effect on output and hence generate no international spillover effects if resources are well managed. And third, even if governments were compelled to reduce fishery subsidies, there may be no spillover benefits to trading partners because of policy substitution: governments would be motivated to weaken other regulations targeting the fish sector.

ASEAN-India Free Trade Agreement in Goods: An Assessment

The study investigates India’s trade prospect with ASEAN countries by analyzing the pattern and trends in India’s bilateral merchandise trade with ASEAN countries and their revealed comparative advantage in different products. The results show that during last three decades India’s share in ASEAN countries’ merchandise trade has increased, but it has been less than that of Japan and China. This shift has been more marked in the case of imports. India runs a large and worsening trade deficit vis-a-vis ASEAN countries. India’s ratio of trade deficit to total foreign trade has had been worst in case of its trade with ASEAN countries. India’s trade intensity in ASEAN countries has deteriorated sharply. ASEAN economies are more open in caparison of Indian economy. Lafay’s index results suggest that India’s comparative advantage is rather poor than ASEAN countries. In addition, in India many specialization improvements occur in those items for which the world demand expands at a faster pace, hinting to the possibility of an increase in India’s share in the world trade in the years to come. In order to enlarge international trade benefits, India should pay attention to pave the way for concluding the multilateral trade liberalization under WTO’s Doha round trade negotiations.

Agriculture and Its Discontents: Coalitional Politics at the wto with Special Reference to India’s Food Security Interests

The demise of the Doha round of trade negotiations is often attributed to deadlocks in agricultural negotiations between the developed and the developing world. Why has agriculture been so difficult to negotiate? This article explains North-South agricultural negotiations through the lens of coalition politics, especially the shift from bloc to issue-based diplomacy from the developing world. We argue against the proposition in the negotiation literature that multiple coalitions at the international level allow negotiators room to maneuver. Our study shows that bloc coalitions in fact allowed for compromise more than issue-based coalitions in agriculture, which are often supported by strong domestic constituencies. Empirically, the article focuses on the Uruguay Round when the North and South struck an agreement on agriculture and the Doha Round, which remains deadlocked. The article also provides an in-depth case study of India’s agricultural interests and its food security program in the context of thewto.

The World Trade Organization's Dispute Settlement Understanding: Are All (Un)Equal?

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the most visible and contested institutions within the global economic governance architecture. Both proponents and opponents of trade liberalization regularly voice discontent with the institution’s functioning and its effect on the economies of its members. Of particular interest is the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU), often described as the organization’s flagship body. The WTO DSU helps parties to settle disputes related to the interpretation and enforcement of the provisions drafted and agreed upon over several trade negotiation rounds. This paper presents a game-theoretic approach to analyze whether the WTO DSU ensures equal access and outcomes to all parties who are part of a trade dispute. It particularly addresses the costs of litigation. The paper argues that due to these issues, developing countries will not reap equal benefits from the usage of the WTO DSU as their developed counterparts. Developing countries will, due to a relative higher cost of WTO litigation, be worse off, both as a plaintiff and as a defendant. They will file less complaints and settle for less beneficial outcomes. We also find that bilateral settlement is a very important feature in the WTO DSU.

Data, Trade, and Growth

Cross-border data flows are a major aspect of today’s global economy. Moreover, the volume of cross-border data flows is growing at a rapid rate, with data flowing through terrestrial and submarine cables, and to a much lesser extent via satellites. According to TeleGeography, a consulting firm that keeps track of international data flows, demand for international bandwidth increased at a compound annual rate of 49 percent between 2008 and 2012. Cross-border data flows are also increasingly critical in trade negotiations. Cross-border data flows are one of the main subjects of the new round of trade negotiations announced by the United States Trade Representative, Ambassador Ron Kirk in January 2013. Similarly, the European Union is considering new data privacy regulations that would impact flows of data in and out of the EU. Ironically, statistics about the magnitude of cross-border data flows are scarce, despite their growing economic and political importance. The trade report from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis contains some information about imports and exports of telecommunications services, but we show that these figures likely miss much of the increase in cross-border data traffic because of fundamental changes in the structure of global networks. Similarly, international agencies such as the ITU only collect fragmentary statistics on cross-border data flows, though they are putting more effort into estimating such figures. Moreover, we may not have the right conceptual framework for thinking about the economic impact of cross-border data flows. The usual categories of exports and imports don’t apply very well to cross-border data flows, since it’s not clear that an outflow of data from a country should count as an export. Indeed, long-established conventions treat outgoing international phone calls as imports, even though both the originating network and the receiving network play an equal role in the call. We will see below the assignment of outgoing international phone calls to the import category is essentially an artifact of regulation. This paper is intended as a preliminary exploration of the empirical, conceptual, and policy aspects of cross-border data flows. There are six sections. • An examination of how cross-border data flows are being reported — and not being reported — in the current trade statistics. • A typology of cross-border data flows. • An analysis of the magnitude of cross-border data flows, based on a comparison all internet/IP traffic. We find that for the United States, cross-border flows are roughly 16-25% of all U.S. data traffic, which is very significant. Cross-border data flows between Europe and the rest of the world equal roughly 13-16% of all European data traffic. These estimates, which should be treated as highly imprecise and tentative, suggest that the United States is more interconnected with the rest of the world than Europe. • An initial analysis of the economic benefits of cross-border data flows. In particular, we develop a framework for measuring the impact of data flows that cross borders without leaving a monetary footprint. • We explore the implications of latency as the equivalent of the “cost of shipping” for data. • Finally, we briefly examine the effects of policy on data, trade, and growth. An early draft of this paper was presented at a non-reviewed conference on “Measuring the Effects of Globalization” (Washington DC, February 28-March 1, 2013).

Empowering the poor? The successes and limitations of the Bali Package for the ldcs

After over a decade of languishing in stalemate, the Doha Development Agenda – the first round of trade negotiations launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organization – finally achieved a breakthrough at the Bali ministerial in 2013. Given that the Doha mandate places development – and particularly the concerns of the Least Developed Countries (ldcs) – at the heart of its agenda, our paper focuses on what the Bali outcome means for the world’s poorest countries. As a first step we provide a brief background against which the Bali negotiations took place. In the second section we assess the achievements and limitations of the Bali outcome, focusing on the ldc-specific package and also commenting on other issues that affect the ldcs. In the third section we explain the reasons for some of the achievements at Bali, which include negotiating strategies used by the ldcs themselves. In the fourth and final section we identify a plan of action for the future.

The EU’s New FTA Adventures and Their Implications for China

With the EU having an adventure in FTA negotiations after the serious setback from the Doha Round trade negotiations, China becomes increasingly concerned about the potential trade diversion effects and the possible G2 domination by the EU and the US in terms of rule-making power in world trade. This article offers both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the potential impact on China from the EU's two major FTA negotiations - one with the US and the other with Japan. Chinese intellectuals who are paying attention to these two FTAs, however, have very mixed opinions, which can be characterized as positive, negative or what can be termed as 'marginal impact'. On the basis of the analysis of the mixed opinions, the authors make further predictions about the possible responses of the Chinese government towards new FTA strategy of the EU, and suggest that the EU's FTAs need to exhibit sign of greater amicability and accepting of differing opinions and most importantly, they should form building blocks, instead of stumbling blocks, for the multilateral trading system.

Multilateral determinants of regionalism revisited

The idea that some features of the multilateral trading system create incentives for countries to join preferential trade agreements (PTAs) is among the first and most influential explanations for the wave of regionalism in the last decades. Until recently, only a few empirical studies have explored this hypothesis and their results have been accepted by many researchers and policy-makers to be a fact. In this study we revisit the question of whether multilateral events are important determinants of regionalism. We use an extended dataset and implement several empirical specifications in the analysis. Unlike previous work, our results provide little support for the relevance of variables such as the number of GATT/WTO members, ongoing trade negotiation rounds, and trade disputes as predictors of PTA formation.

The Optimal Path of aChina–Japan–KoreaFTA: Multilateral Path or Sequential Path?

This study aims to analyze the possibility of a multilateralNortheastAsian free‐trade agreement (FTA), aChina–Japan–KoreaFTA(CJK FTA), and estimates the optimal path towards achieving it. Although there have been a number of studies examining why aCJK FTAshould be formed given its likely welfare‐enhancing effects, studies on precisely how and through what paths it might be formed are extremely scarce. Investigating the influences from industry interest groups and national security relations amongChina,Japan andSouthKorea, this study finds that a multilateral path (rather than a sequential path) whereinSouthKorea plays a key role as a hub (rather than a leader) is the optimal route for establishing aCJK FTA. Although two possible bilateralFTAs (aChina–KoreaFTAand aJapan–KoreaFTA) are more likely to be feasible, in particular, they are less likely to serve as a stepping‐stone to multilateralFTAformation. Consequently, this study mainly argues thatChina,Japan, andSouthKorea, the three main economies inNortheastAsia, should simultaneously participate in a single round of trade negotiations in order to establish aCJK FTA.

Trade, Globalization and Economic Policy

This article places international trade law in the context of the rapid increase in economic growth and globalization over the last 60 years that is reducing poverty and expanding the middle class in most nations of the world. This economic and cultural integration of markets and peoples has been stimulated by two major factors: first, the increase in technological innovation in transport, information technology and manufacturing processes and second, the removal of legal barriers to the flow of goods, capital and knowledge around the globe stimulated by successive rounds of trade negotiations at the GATT and later the WTO.The arguments for and against globalization are analyzed within the context of the history of economic ideas and with an understanding that there are tradeoffs because not all people benefit from these rapid changes. While technological innovation spurs economic growth, the full benefits cannot be realized unless technology and the resulting products are widely available through trade. The world trade regime has evolved to significantly remove barriers to trade, provide a forum to settle trade disputes, and develop uniform legal standards to resolve disputes. The chapter forecasts a further increase in the trend toward one world market, the convergence of wage rates for manufactured products and many services, the continued rise of the middle class in emerging economies and a movement toward greater international governance driven by increased pressure for uniform laws to reduce uncertainty and for international forums to reduce inconsistency in application.

Why Do Trade Negotiations Take So Long

The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their conclusion. We use data from 88 regional trade agreements between 1988 and 2009, and a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model. Four factors are robust determinants of the length of RTA negotiations. Negotiations are more protracted when there are more countries at the negotiation table, and when the countries are not from the same region. Negotiations between more open and richer countries are also finished more quickly.

Why Do Trade Negotiations Take So Long?

The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their conclusion. We use data from 88 regional trade agreements between 1988 and 2009, and a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model. Four factors are robust determinants of the length of RTA negotiations. Negotiations are more protracted when there are more countries at the negotiation table, and when the countries are not from the same region. Negotiations between more open and richer countries are also finished more quickly.

Why Do Trade Negotiations Take So Long?

The Doha multilateral round of trade negotiations sponsored by the WTO has been dragging on for over a decade, with no end in sight. In this short paper we assess empirically what determines the duration of trade negotiations, focusing on the span between the start of trade talks and their conclusion. We use data from 88 regional trade agreements between 1988 and 2009, and a semi-parametric Cox proportional hazards model. Four factors are robust determinants of the length of RTA negotiations. Negotiations are more protracted when there are more countries at the negotiation table, and when the countries are not from the same region. Negotiations between more open and richer countries also finish more quickly.

Two Single Undertakings--Can the WTO Implement the Results of a Round?

The World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement was accepted as a single undertaking and the Doha Round is also treated as a single undertaking. That does not imply that any eventual results of the current negotiations can be seamlessly integrated into the existing WTO agreements all at the same time and for all Members at the same time. The procedures used to implement the results of the Uruguay Round will not necessarily be available within the constraints of the WTO's institutional structure. Conversely, the procedures that are available within the WTO framework were not designed for the purpose of implementing the results of a comprehensive round of trade negotiations and preserving an overall balance of concessions embodied in multiple legal forms. This means that implementation will alter the multilateral nature of the WTO as it presently stands. WTO Members may yet be at liberty to revert to earlier approaches to implementation which are better adapted to the logic underlying the single undertaking approach. This paper reviews the potential form of the results of the Round as it emerges from draft modalities and texts, analyses the challenges ahead and suggests possible ways forward. Oxford University Press 2011, all rights reserved, Oxford University Press.

Advancing Sustainable Development in Global Trade and Multilateral Negotiations

Published by Palgrave Macmillan World exports and imports are quickly recovering after the 2008-09 sharp decline in merchandise trade, as illustrated by global trade performances in the first and second quarters of 2010. In spite of this impressive recovery, domestic concerns in OECD countries about employment, competitiveness and China’s exchange rate policy have created a difficult political environment for further liberalisation under the Doha Round. Interestingly, developing countries, which were reluctant to engage in a new round of trade negotiations back in 2001, are now in the vanguard of those that wish for a swift conclusion of the talks, even if consensus on the ambitious ‘development package’ envisaged in Doha remains elusive. At the same time trade has been the subject of unprecedented attention and scrutiny in the climate change talks. In a world where multilateral cooperation is in crisis there is a dire need for the international community to generate new types of arrangements and innovative responses to the imperatives of development and the global transition to a low-carbon economy.

The impact of entry costs on export market participation in agriculture

Theoretical models of market entry imply that sunk costs are an important factor in the decision to export. Following Helpman, Melitz, and Rubinstein (2008), we develop a simple model of foreign market participation and use a Bayesian method to estimate the resulting dynamic discrete-choice model with lagged dependent variable. Employing a balanced panel data that follows 81 trading partners for 30 years from 1971 to 2000, we estimate our model and compute the marginal effect of sunk costs on the likelihood of export market participation. We find that such costs are economically and statistically important for trade in all of the six major agricultural commodities (Cereals, Dairy, Fish, Meat, Vegetables and Fruits, and Sugar), for agricultural producers in both developed and developing countries. We also find evidence suggesting that, in general, market access for both developed and developing exporters had improved in the years following the Uruguay round of trade negotiations (1995–2000).