Trade Protection Research Articles

History Re-Written: Misconceptions of U.S. Trade and Industrial Policy and the Influence of Neoliberalism

Abstract A disparity exists between mainstream perception and reality with regard to American economic history. There is widespread belief among the public, media, and even some scholars that the U.S. amassed its wealth and prosperity from the adoption of exclusively free-market principles from the onset of the union. This is far from reality. Since 1980, the U.S. government has adopted policies that largely support the free-market ideology and can be classified as neoliberal. However, As Chang (2002) and Cohen and DeLong (2016) have shown, during the early stages of economic development and critical junctures whilst a middle-income country, the U.S. record is one of active government intervention in targeted industries, the creation of important institutions to complement free-market competition, and the widespread use of trade protection in support of infant industries. This misconception has significant ramifications for present-day developing countries, which are routinely advised to adopt neoliberal policies with insufficient regard for the idiosyncratic stage of economic development. This paper documents the misconceptions by examining the theoretical basis and historical record of U.S. industrial and trade policy. We detail how this misconception became widespread and ultimately entered policymaking by analyzing two contributing factors: the rise of neoliberalism, and the standard economics curriculum.

중국 수출과 관련한 친환경 포장 장벽에 관한 연구

Green packaging (GP), also known as sustainable packaging, which is considered to protect environment and save resources, was meeting the requirements of sustainable development. In trade area, through the important role in the ecological environment and human health, GP and its system might effect on China’s export a new trade protection measure. Here, this paper explained the definition and reimbursement of GP/GPB. It also provided packaging regulations in China’s major trading partners such as the European Union, the United States and South Korea and showed some trade cases related to packaging. Finally, in order to deal with GPBs effectively and eliminate or be weaken the impact of GPBs on China’s export trade, this paper proposed some suggestions. It is hoped that through the study of this paper, the research and development (R&D) of GP can be promoted, and the application value of GP can be exerted in China’s foreign trade and social production.

Examining the role of border protectionism in border inspections: panel structural vector autoregression evidence from FDA import refusals on China's agricultural exports

PurposeAs technical barriers gradually become the important tools of trade protection, it is important to understand whether intensified enforcement of border controls is adopted as a hidden tool of trade protectionism and differs across periods and industries.Design/methodology/approachThis article applies a panel structural vector autoregression (PSVAR) model to investigate the potential role of trade protectionism motives in Food and Drug Administration (FDA) import refusals on China's agricultural exports, utilizing newly constructed monthly data at the industry level.FindingsThe results show that import refusal is mainly driven by the inspection history, highlighting the importance of the intrinsic product quality and maintaining an excellent inspection history in border inspection. The novel finding is that US employment contractions would also lead to a small increase in FDA import refusals, especially those taking place within ten months and made without sampling tests. Such an association is driven by industry-specific employment shocks and becomes stronger after the financial crisis. It is also more evident in industries where the US lacks competitiveness against China, being manufactured without mandatory safety regulations, and with negative skewness of employment growth.Originality/valueThis research is one of the preliminary attempts to understand whether the de facto border controls are worked as a hidden tool of protectionism to agricultural products, and what the specific trajectory and duration of the impacts at the monthly level. This study provides empirical evidence showing the role of protectionism motives in FDA import refusals and is heterogeneous across industries, which generate new insights and policy implications to predict and cope with additional barriers on agricultural trade.

The Inevitable Disclosure Doctrine and Corporate Tax Avoidance

In this study, we investigate the effect of the protection of trade secrets through the adoption of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by US state courts on corporate tax avoidance. We suggest a positive impact of IDD adoption on tax avoidance because IDD adoption reduces information transparency by increasing the benefit of nondisclosure and, hence, creates greater opportunities for firms to engage in more aggressive tax avoidance activities. Based on a large sample of US firms between 1977 and 2011, we find a significant increase in tax avoidance for firms in states that have adopted the IDD, compared with firms in states that have not adopted it. We further show that the impact of the IDD on corporate tax avoidance is more salient in firms with lower internal information quality. Our findings have important implications for both investors and regulators.

A Simple Method to Quantify the Ex-Ante Effects of "Deep" Trade Liberalization and "Hard" Trade Protection

A Simple Method to Quantify the Ex-Ante Effects of "Deep" Trade Liberalization and "Hard" Trade Protection

Wildlife Protection and Prevention of Illegal Wildlife Trade: Legal Framework and Challenges

This paper examines wildlife protection and prevention of illegal wildlife trade, the importance of it and the role law plays in ensuring that wildlife is protected and its illegal trade curbed. It goes further to examine some national, regional, and international instruments towards these double aims. The national instruments focus on Uganda and the regional instruments focus on the East African Community. Towards the end, the author also examines and analyses some challenges facing wildlife protection and prevention of illegal wildlife trade.

Trade Protection, Stock-Market Returns, and Welfare

We show that the specific factors model can be used to derive a rigorous link between movements in stock prices and productivity, wages, employment, output, and welfare. We also prove that the commonly used measure of the effective rate of protection equals the dual measure of revenue TFP, providing a theoretical foundation for why many studies have found that trade liberalization significantly increases firm-level productivity. Our method enables us to trace a tariff announcement's effect on TFP through its impact on macro variables (e.g., exchange rates) and through its effect on the relative prices of imports. We apply this framework to understanding the implications of the U.S.-China trade war. Our results show that the trade-war announcements caused large declines in U.S. stock prices, expected TFP, and expected inflation largely by moving macro variables, but also by causing declines in the returns of firms trading with China. We find that markets expect the trade war to lower U.S. welfare by 7.8 percentage points, which is much larger than the predictions of static models but in line with those of dynamic models. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Investment Protection in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty (TTIP)

Investment Protection in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Treaty (TTIP)

Recognition and protection of copyright objects under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

The article is devoted to the problem of copyright protection under the existing agreements of the World Trade Organization. The analysis of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) which occupies the central place in the system of WTO normative legal acts is presented in the study. The paper reveals certain categories of intellectual property rights subject to protection under this Agreement, procedural aspects of the acquisition and preservation of copyrights, as well as minimum standards for the intellectual property rights protection adopted by WTO member states. It is concluded that copyright protection depends not only on substantive rules that provide for minimum standards of protection, but also on procedural and legal mechanisms that provide effective ways to ensure compliance with these rules. The article highlights the unique role of the TRIPS Agreement in the sphere of copyright and intellectual property rights protection in international trade.

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

The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West by Ricardo Padrón

Reviewed by: The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West by Ricardo Padrón Kristie Patricia Flannery (bio) The Indies of the Setting Sun: How Early Modern Spain Mapped the Far East as the Transpacific West ricardo padrón University of Chicago Press, 2020 352 pp. Voyages of discovery and conquest radically reconfigured how Europeans imagined their world in the sixteenth century. In The Indies of the Setting Sun, Ricardo Padrón explores the spatial imaginaries of elite Spaniards in the period bookended by Balboa's "discovery" of the Pacific Ocean in 1513 in present-day Panama and the 1606 Spanish conquest of the Moluccas. The book's central argument is that Spaniards "mapped America and Asia into a shared transpacific space" (23). Padrón persuades us that their attempts "to keep America and Asia together" was not a marginal effort; "it was the dominant tradition" (23). Sixteenth-century Spaniards knitted Asia and America together in varied ways. Their visions of Amerasian continuity included representations of an immense Amer-Asia landmass with an unbroken coastline that stretched from Mexico to China. Others saw America and Asia as separated by an easily navigable, "contained" Pacific Ocean, or linked by shared climates and the common characteristics that these seemingly produced in humans and their governments, rendering them ripe for conquest. The forgotten history of Spanish world-building that Padrón recovers poses a powerful challenge to the "invention of America" myth. Long dominating the historiography of discovery, this narrative purports that Renaissance Spaniards came to regard [End Page 936] America as a new and separate part of the world, utterly distinct from the old world of Europe and Asia. A lot is at stake when it comes to cartography. Mapping the Indies of the East and the Indies of the West as deeply connected places mattered in the sixteenth century. This view of the world "fuelled the exploration of what we call North America, the continued effort to master Pacific navigation, and the colonization of the Philippines" (23). It inspired Spanish dreams of military and spiritual conquest in China and Japan and ultimately facilitated the establishment and protection of the galleon trade, whose instrumental role in globalization has been well studied. And maps still matter now. In the book's introduction, Padrón explains that maps are so foundational to academic disciplines that "the invention of America" myth has defined and constrained how scholars across fields have studied the history and culture of the Hispanic world. The paradigm of American insularity contributed to the development of an interdisciplinary colonial Latin American studies that largely ignored colonial Latin Asia and the Spanish transpacific. Padrón promises that our field will be enriched when we expand these foundational maps to recognize and analyze the meanings and implications of "Amerasian continuity." The Pacific turn sails full steam ahead. Padrón deserves praise for liberating the study of conceptions of space and place on a metascale from the study of conventional maps or drawings of the earth's surface. Although such maps figure prominently in this book, they by no means dominate Padrón's analysis of how "the link between Spanish America and Asia … registered in the consciousness of Spanish American elites" (27). Padrón, a literary scholar, mines sixteenth-century printed books including travelogues and official histories of Spanish conquests that speak to notions of Amerasian continuity across the Pacific. Thanks to the digital revolution, many of these primary sources are available to read online. The authors of this body of cartographic literature were all elite Spanish men: navigators, missionaries, and official Crown cosmographers and historians. Some of them endured long and dangerous sea-crossings across the great Pacific Ocean and visited the places they wrote about, whereas others never left Europe and developed geographical knowledge by way of diverse informants. One thing that plural visions of a Spanish transpacific had in common was that they strategically served imperial ends. "To make Spain's claims to authority over East [End Page 937] and Southeast Asia look convincing, the Spanish Indies had to appear as a continuous, unbroken expanse stretching from the line of demarcation...

ЗАРУБІЖНИЙ ДОСВІД РОЗВИТКУ ПІДПРИЄМСТВ МАЛОГО БІЗНЕСУ

The article identifies the role of small business in the development of national economies that is due to the ease of perception of innovations, the creation of a significant number of jobs, contentment of social needs in goods and services. It was established that due to a number of problems faced by domestic small business, there is a need to form new approaches to the development of this area. On the basis of the Global rating of favorable business conditions was assessed the business environment of the world. There were taken into account such indicators as business registration, obtaining building permits, connection to the power supply system, property registration, obtaining loans, protection of minority investors, taxation, and International trade, ensuring the implementation of contract and insolvency settlement. It is determined that the top three in this indicator (by 2020) included New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong. Emphasis was placed on the significant difference (more than four times) in the ease of doing business index between the leader – New Zealand (86.59) and the outsider – Somalia (20.0), that indicates unevenness development of this area in the countries of the world. Based on a study of foreign experience in the development of small business in developed countries were identified practices that were interesting for further adaptation in Ukraine. Namely: formation of an effective legal framework; implementation of an effective regulatory policy and the use of a program-targeted approach to state regulation; state support of small business through the implementation of investment programs, projects, assistance in obtaining government orders, the formation of effective credit and tax policies, aimed at solving problems of financial and credit support of small business; stimulating innovation and development of small innovative enterprises and relevant infrastructure facilities (technology parks, science parks, venture funds), improving the system of training and retraining of specialists for small business; development of information technologies and e-business; active promotion of small enterprises, creation of necessary support institutions; cooperation of large and small business entities.

Regulatory Autonomy under the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement: Implications of Korea – Import Bans, and Testing and Certification Requirements for Radionuclides

The recent WTO dispute case, Korea – Import Bans, and Testing and Certification Requirements for Radionuclides (Korea – Radionuclides), illustrates complex legal issues and significant political implications associated with the regulatory autonomy of a sovereign country under the WTO Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement (SPS Agreement). There has been constant tension between the sovereign right of a WTO member state to determine its own appropriate level of protection (ALOP) and the regulatory constraints imposed under the SPS Agreement to prevent abuse and disguised trade protection. The case emerged from this tension and raises questions on the extent of the regulatory autonomy in the application of an SPS measure. This article addresses these questions and examines the criteria for the qualitative standards for the ALOP, the question that the Appellate Body decision did not fully resolve. The criteria for the qualitative ALOP standards affect the regulatory autonomy significantly under the current SPS rules as it determines the manner and the extent of which a Member may meet the sensitive public interests in the application of an SPS measure. The article proposes a rational basis test to restrain abuse of SPS measures while preserving the regulatory autonomy protected under the SPS Agreement.

Trade Policy as an Exogenous Shock: Focusing on the Specifics

This paper proposes a novel strategy for identifying the effects of import competition on economic outcomes that avoids standard concerns related to the endogeneity of trade policy and provides a consistent measure of exposure to trade over time. Conditioning on the level of import tariffs, our approach exploits cross-industry differences in the relative importance of specific rather than ad valorem tariffs. As they are expressed in per unit terms rather than as a share of value, the effective protection provided by a given specific tariff varies with price levels. Using digitized tariff line data between 1900 and 1940, we relate inflation-driven changes in trade protection to changes in imports and labor market outcomes in the full count U.S. census. We show that our measure predicts import growth at both the industry and county level. Using our measure as an instrument, we show that import competition reduces labor force participation in traded sectors during this period. Labor market effects are widespread but fall most heavily on those with little experience or fewer outside labor market options: the young, seniors, and those in rural areas.

The Research on the Personal Data Protection in China's International Trade

When the balance of personal data, cross-border data flow and national interests has become a global consensus, China’s protection of personal data in international trade is still at the preliminary exploration stage. Through analysis of the current status of domestic legislation and foreign practices, China’s The dilemma of China’s personal data protection position is unclear, which is manifested in the conflict between data localization and data liberalization, unbalanced personal data, cross-border data flow, and conflicts between national interests, incomplete domestic governance mechanisms, and foreign trade individuals The problem of limited data protection effectiveness. Therefore, the thesis hopes to find answers to the plight of personal data protection in international trade from the legislation and external experience of the European Union and the United States. Based on the current situation in China, on the basis of drawing on the experience of the European and American models, the thesis mainly studies two goals, namely, on the one hand, it establishes the overall position of China s participation in the protection of personal data in international trade, and on the other hand, it is a better implement your ideas in international trade and provide countermeasures and suggestions. Therefore, on the macro level, China should adopt a trade-led protection strategy based on data sovereignty based on national interests, implement different standards of personal data protection measures in terms of national interests, commercial interests, and individual legal rights. Provide relevant suggestions, such as narrowing the scope of application of the “assessment method” security assessment, clarifying the specific scope of key information infrastructure, etc., and clarifying the national position in external practice, by participating in WTO rules, strengthening bilateral and multilateral cooperation, etc. China’s voice is voiced in the formulation of international rules to safeguard China’s national interests.

The Effects of the Temporary Protection on Firm Performances: Evidence from the Steel Industry in Vietnam

Trade protection may have significant impacts on sectors other than those targeted by the protection policies, especially when the target sector produces goods that are essential inputs to downstream sectors. Using panel Vietnamese enterprise surveys from 2010 to 2017, this paper examines whether temporary trade protection has a significant impact on the steel sectors and downstream users of steel. We find that during the trade protection period to the steel sector, this policy increased sales of protected firms but hurt downstream firms. Particularly, trade protection has significant impacts on sales, profit, and productivity of downstream firms in the sectors that use steel intensively as their inputs. Additionally, these adverse effects of protection are more severe to small downstream firms.

U.S. in the global FDI’ flows: repatriation of foreign earning by U.S. from EU members as the new global trend

Scientific investigation covers the questions of U.S.’ involvedness into the international economic relations and into the international trade of goods and services and international movement of FDI as well. The fact that USA is the larger importer and the second exporter of goods in the world (2018), and the largest exporter and importer of commercial services (2018), the biggest host economy of FDI, and the largest investor (till 2017) the investigation of the American investment cooperation is the rather important affair, that can show the tough dependence of U.S.’ economy of foreign countries investments flows and regimes. In accordance with UNCTAD data U.S. is holding the first place as the exporter of FDI during the long period till 2018, that showed the negative number of FDI outflow in 2018 as the result of tax reform’ implementation at the end of 2017. Implementation of open and tough foreign trade policy (the policy of protectionism) through the import tariffs increasing is aimed at trade deficit reduction, protection and support of the American producers, implementation of tax reform at the end of 2017, making come true the soundbites of D. Trump “Make America Great Again” and “America first”. The author analyzed investment cooperation of U.S. and EU, its dynamic, specialization, directions. The author came to conclusion that correlation of United States’ investment indicators with European Union showed an unequal evaluation of each Union’ member and determined the disproportion of understanding and examination of regional integration not as the complex subject of the global economy but as the set of different and independent subjects. Investigation of U.S.’ FDI export and import statistics gave the author opportunity to come the conclusion that there is the specific of U.S.’ investment outflow into the European Union countries reflected through the limited set of investment recipients. At the same time, implementation of the tax reforms at the end of 2017 could lead to the changing of global investment flows from low tax jurisdictions to USA, for example.

An assessment of import tariff costs for Italian exporting firms

Since production and trade are increasingly organized within global value chains (GVCs), assessing who effectively pays the cost of protection is not straightforward and since productive processes are internationally fragmented, quantifying the effects of trade policy requires an enhanced analytical framework that takes international input–output linkages into account to assess the implications trade costs have on competitiveness at national and sector levels. This paper defines a new synthetic measure of trade protection based on the value added in trade, capturing the effects that the tariff structure has on exporting firms that rely on imported intermediate inputs. The index, defined in a general equilibrium framework, provides a theoretically sound protection measurement in the context of GVCs. We assess trade protection by computing protection indexes at the bilateral level on both gross imports and imports to exports using the Global Trade Analysis Project computable general equilibrium model. These indexes are used to investigate the relationship between the European Union tariffs and integration of the Italian GVCs. In the case of Italy, imports to exports are overall less protected than gross imports with significant differences at the sector level. Despite the low levels of nominal protection, industrial sectors play a central role in explaining our results. EU tariffs mostly affect Italian exporting firms in the case of chemical products, wearing apparel and leather products.

Empirical Research on the Influence of Export Market Diversification on Total Factor Productivity:Based on the Perspective of Trade Protection

This paper mainly explores the impact of export market diversification as an important measure to deal with trade friction on firms total factor productivity. Firstly, this article focuses on the theoretical analysis of the impact mechanism, including risk diversification, reversal effect and spillover effect. Based on the sample data of Chinese manufacturing export enterprises from 2000 to 2007, this paper conducts an empirical test on the relationship between export market diversification and total factor productivity. The result indicates that export market diversification has a significant positive effect on the total factor productivity of enterprises. After considering the endogenous problem, by controlling the fixed effects, using the two-stage least square method and changing the duration of the sample for robustness analysis, the results are still consistent. In addition, the role of diversification policy in total factor productivity presents heterogeneous characteristics in terms of different types of enterprise ownership, export intensity, industry competition, trade methods, and the development degree of exporting market. Accordingly, this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.

When two worlds collide: a comprehensive approach to the intellectual property and investment law interface

Investment law and intellectual property (IP) law have largely developed unaffected by each other and, so far, any discussion on their interaction has been largely theoretical. That is until recently, when a small number of high-profile investment disputes has drawn attention to the interaction between national IP regimes and the international investment system. Christophe Geiger brought together experts from the worlds of IP and trade and investment law to explore the many questions that the interplay between these two conceptually very different systems raise. The Research Handbook on Intellectual Property and Investment Law addresses this evolving relationship in two parts. First of all, it analyses the systemic interaction between investment law and IP law in its national and international dimensions. Within the first part, one section addresses the protection of IP in trade and investment treaties, and another discusses the impact of investment protection on policy and regulatory autonomy. The section part begins with Henning Grosse Ruse-Khan, the author of an authoritative monograph on IP protection in international law, who sets the scene by outlining the elements of IP protection in trade and investment agreements. He notes opposing trends in international IP treaties and international investment agreements. Whereas the former limit the scope of national regulatory powers, the latter seem to grant Member States greater policy space. These opposing trends are further analysed by Susy Frankel who contrasts the object and purpose of IP and investment protection in treaties that protect both. The fundamental question of whether IP is protected as an investment and therefore falls within the scope of protection of investment law in the first place is addressed by Ruth Okediji and Carlos Correa. Both discuss the conditions for protection and how the scope of protection should be defined in order to retain policy space for states and to avoid abusive investor claims. The other chapters discuss the fundamental protection standards of international investment agreements (national treatment, most favoured nation and fair and equitable treatment) as applied to IP. Three chapters in the second section return to the question of national autonomy. They address issues raised by recent investment cases that involved IP claims. While Cynthia Ho argues that investor–state arbitration might have negative aspects on TRIPS flexibilities, Simon Klopschinski and Daniel Gervais focus on the notion of public policy in an investment context and how investment tribunals should approach this notion.