Essays on International Trade: Antidumping, Competition and Trade Facilitation
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Beschreibung
Previous World Trade Organisation (WTO) trade rounds have been predominantly about liberalization in trade in goods and the development of predictable and transparent rules to govern this trade. Rules on antidumping pre-date discussions on those for competition and trade facilitation, however, negotiations during the Doha round have centred on tightening antidumping rules in order to ensure that the exceptions to most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment are not disguised barriers to trade. Rules on competition policy and trade facilitation were proposed more recently as part of the Singapore Issues, however it was decided by the WTO members that negotiations on the modalities for a multilateral agreement on trade facilitation alone would be pursued.
The Doha round has stalled, mainly due to divergent positions on market access and domestic subsidies in agriculture. Consequently, all other areas of the negotiations have also been put on hold. This dissertation will, amongst other things, examine the effects of existing and future multilateral rules in the areas of antidumping, competition policy, and trade facilitation. All three issues, if not addressed by more clear and transparent rules, will lead to market capture by interest groups; in the case of antidumping, by powerful domestic but often inefficient industries, in the case of competition, by the anti-competitive activities of both foreign and domestic companies, and in the case of trade facilitation, by local and parochial interests including, in this instance, the possible opposition of government officials who wish to cling to inefficient (or quite distinctly, corrupt) practices.
My PhD dissertation examines three areas where knowing more about rules in international trade is important. The first chapter addresses the degree of market power that European exporters exercised in selected East Asian markets between 1989 and 2004. My results suggest that in one-quarter of product lines considered here European firms exercised market power in East Asian markets for manufactured goods. UK exporters are able to pass-through exchange rate fluctuations more successfully than their French and German rivals. Thailand seems to be the most vulnerable to non-competitive pricing by foreign firms, a result supported by anecdotal evidence that Thailand has a weak competition regime. In contrast, South Korea, a country known to have a strong competition law enforcement regime, is found to be the least vulnerable to market power. This result could suggest a link between competition policy regimes and the gains from international trade.
The second chapter examines the issue of trade facilitation. Some have limited the scope of the definition of trade facilitation to reforming customs procedures and technical regulations relating to the flow of goods across national borders. Others have expanded this definition to include the environment in which cross-border transactions occur, such as customs administration, payments system, rules of origin, transport, technical regulations, health and safety, government procurement, competition policy, and tax collection. Negotiations on a multilateral agreement on trade facilitation are underway and will hopefully help reformist governments by galvanising export interests to overcome the opposition of local and parochial interests. Without additional rules in trade facilitation, the gains from increased market access will be fruitless.
The third and final chapter examines the issue of trade diversion as a result of antidumping measures. The current rules on antidumping measures are weak and ambiguous. These rules were initially established to ensure that market liberalization did not lead to predatory pricing activities of firms in countries where either costs or prices were lower. Analyses have shown that the determination of dumping is often more politically than economically motivated. In the current and prior trade rounds, developing countries have argued that the use of contingent protection devices abroad undermines market access opportunities gained in the negotiations. In contrast, industrialised countries maintain that contingent protection devices are necessary to ensure that domestic industries have sufficient time to adapt to the increase in imports following liberalisation. In this chapter, I estimate the degree of trade diversion which occurs when a party is named in either an EC or Indian antidumping investigation ‘event’. Two secondary hypotheses are also tested, namely whether the initiation or the outcome acts as a deterrent to exports from named countries and which outcome has a greater impact on trade i.e. duties, negative finding, or undertaking. This analysis found that investigation effects dominate, the second investigation has a larger effect than the first (i.e. punishes re-offenders), and that antidumping policy can have a sizeable impact on trade. Given the clear impact that antidumping policy has on trade, continued negotiations on rules in antidumping would benefit all parties.
Autor*in
Krista Lucenti
Themen in »Essays on International Trade: Antidumping, Competition and Trade Facilitation«
Doha Singapore Issues WTO cartel competition law competition policy market power