The Value of Tariff Preferences for the Developing Countries: Australian Experience (original) (raw)

Non-Tariff Distortions of Australian Trade

The Economic Journal, 1974

This study is one of a number of studies of non-tariff instruments affecting international trade which were done at roughly the same time in seven countries. These studies are being coordinated by the Trade Policy Research Centre in London. I am grateful to the Australian National University and the Trade Policy Research Centre for allowing me to travel to a conference in London of the persons engaged in these country studies and to benefit from the parallel work which is going on in other countries. This difficult area of trade policy is at last receiving more of the attention it deserves. Hitherto in Australia there have been only passing discussions of a small number of non-tariff instruments in some Tariff Board reports, in the Report of the Vernon Committee and a few other places. This study provides a view of non-tariff instruments in Australia over a short period which has not been available before. The descriptions relate to non-tariff instruments as of mid-1972. I have tried to keep the information up to date until the time I finished the research in August 1972. Keeping up with the changes in non-tariff instruments was itself a major task. There are a few cases in which I have not attempted to keep up to date after completing the original research on these instru ments. The material on quarantine describes the situation as of January 1972 and I have not looked at dumping decisions in 1972. Thus the text should be read as applying to the period before the Labor Party victory in the December 1972 elections. I have put together in the Postscript some of the initial actions and statements of the new government which concern non-tariff interventions in Australia's inter national trade. The study would not have been possible without the considerable and generous assistance given to me by several Departments of the Common wealth Government, especially the Departments of Customs and Excise and Trade and Industry. I am very grateful to the numerous officers v vi Preface of these departments, who tried to guide me through the intricacies of non-tariff practices. I am also very grateful to the Tariff Board and the Bureau of Agricultural Economics for providing me with the data used in Chapter 10 to make estimates of the protection implied by some non-tariff instruments restricting imports. Their help enabled me to put a little flesh on the bare bones of description. Finally I acknowledge the comments of my professional colleagues which led me to polish some of the rough edges. Richard Snape and Sir Leslie Melville read the whole manuscript. Geoff Edwards commented on Chapters 8 and 13, Bob Gregory on Chapter 13, members of the Monash University Seminar on Chapter 12 and members of the University of New England Seminar on Chapter 10.

Do Australian Trade Policies Discriminate Against Less Developed Countries?*

Economic Record, 1983

The view that Australian profection discriminates ugainst the less developed countries (LDCs) is examined in this paper. It distinguishes between direct discrimination through tariff preferences and indirect discrimination through inter-commodity differences in rates of protection. The second mechanism proves to be more important. While AustraIian protection did not discriminate against the LDCs in 1968-49, by 1977-78 it did. This reflects changes in the commodity composition of .4ustralia's imports from the LDCS. I Introduction The GATT system of regulating world trade is based on the principle of non-discrimination among trading partners. This is enshrined in Article 1 of GATT. the Most Favoured Nation clause. Yet during the 1960s and 1970s it became conventional wisdom among the trade representatives of lcss developed countries (LDCs) and United Nations agencies that the protection policies of the more developed countries (MDCs) discriminate against the LDCs as a group. This was thought to occur because the structure of commodity protection employed by the MDCs imposed relatively high tariff barriers to the *Numerous individuals have generously contributed their efforts to this study. These include Brock Bryce.

Preferential trade agreements and the future of Australian trade policy

Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2008

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Rules of Origin Effect: Bangladesh’s Performance under Australian Preferential Scheme

Trade preference schemes of developed countries to least developed countries (LDCs) are important parts of foreign trade policy of advanced nations. For LDCs, availing trade preferences is also important for the success of their exportoriented economic growth and integration to the global economy. However, such measures of trade liberalization from developed countries are clouted by protectionist measures like stringent rules of origin to avail preference, which tend to nullify the welfare-enhancing outcomes of trade preference. With a relatively less protectionist regime, Australia has been providing duty-free and quota-free market access to all products from all LDCs since 2003. Nevertheless, despite being a least developed country, Bangladesh could not get the desirable benefits from Australian trade preference scheme over the last few years. The case of Bangladesh’s poor performance under Australian scheme consequently aims to observe whether rules of origin have any effect on meager preference utilization as registered by Bangladesh.

The trade effects of tariffs and non-tariff changes of preferential trade agreements

Economic Modelling

The Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis in the Crawford School of Public Policy has been established to build strong links between professional macroeconomists. It provides a forum for quality macroeconomic research and discussion of policy issues between academia, government and the private sector. The Crawford School of Public Policy is the Australian National University's public policy school, serving and influencing Australia, Asia and the Pacific through advanced policy research, graduate and executive education, and policy impact.

Quantifying the value of U.S. tariff preferences for developing countries

In recent debates, trade preference erosion has been viewed by some as damaging to developing countries, and by others as insignificant, except in a few cases. But little data have been available to back either view. The objective of this paper is to improve our measures of the size, utilization, and value of all U.S. nonreciprocal trade preference programs in order to shed light on this debate. Highly disaggregated data are used to quantify the margins, coverage, utilization, and value of agricultural and nonagricultural tariff preferences for all beneficiary countries in the U.S. regional programs and in the Generalized System of Preferences. Results show that U.S. regional tariff preference programs are generally characterized by high coverage of beneficiary countries'exports, high utilization by beneficiary countries, and low tariff preference margins (except on apparel). For 29 countries, the value of U.S. tariff preferences was 5 percent or more of 2003 dutiable exports to...

Trade Preferences: All Are Not Created Equal

2016

The United States imports around 25 % of its merchandise under some form of pref-erential trade agreement. This paper examines the relative impacts of these programs on the value of imports from different trading partners. We address four technical but policy-relevant issues: (1) We consider not only country eligibility in assessing impact of various programs, but also the extent of utilization of these programs, which depends on the relevant rules of origin and other compliance costs. (2) Trade preferences are granted for non-economic motivations that are correlated with variables included in gravity models. We provide new estimates that control for this potential source of se-lection bias. (3) We provide new estimates of the impact of transport and transactions costs beyond distance. (4) Finally, we control the censoring of trade flows at zero which tends to bias estimates of key coefficients in gravity models. In the standard gravity estimation, we find that beneficiaries of thes...