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In response to the surges in world agricultural and food prices that have occurred since 2006, many countries imposed controls on their agricultural exports, using taxes, quotas, and complete export bans. Further, during the past few decades, many countries have maintained longstanding export taxes not only on agricultural goods, but also on forestry and fishery products, minerals, metals, and precious stones. This study examines the market effects of a conventional export tax, as well as three alternative policies that are less market distorting, and thereby less welfare diminishing: a subsidy to consumption, a tax on production, and a modification of a conventional export tax that allows additional exports after producers meet a sales requirement for their output. All three alternatives result in more exports of affected goods than the unmodified tax does. The increased exports will thereby benefit foreign consumers, and if the country is a large exporter of an affected good on the world market, the benefit is larger, because the additional exports will lower the good's world purchase price. Increased global sales and lower prices will improve world food security and benefit the consuming poor of the world, especially if the affected product is a staple food such as wheat or rice. Policies that pursue such goals are consistent with U.S. efforts to improve world food security. However, the alternative policies are "second best" options because they are less effective at increasing both domestic and world economic welfare than the first best policy of abolishing the export tax and allowing free export.

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. However, 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 US non-reciprocal trade preference programs, in order to shed some light on this debate. Highly disaggregated data are used to quantify the margins, coverage, utilization and value of nonagricultural and agricultural tariff preferences, for all beneficiary countries in the US regional programs and in the GSP. Results show that US 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 US tariff preferences was 5% or more of 2003 dutiable exports to the US, even after incorporating actual utilization. Most of this value is attributable to non-agricultural tariff preferences, and to apparel preferences in particular. These results suggest that preference erosion may be significant for more countries than many had thought.

de facto acceptance of regulatory decisions made by the mega-agreement partners. The Latin American strategies toward these potentially significant agreements and the impacts of the TPP and T-TIP on Latin American agriculture have so far gone largely unstudied.Several possible avenues exist for Latin American countries to counter the impact of a TPP and TTIP on agricultural exports. One possible avenue would be to strengthen existing bilateral trade agreements within the region and to rely on multilateral trade negotiations to improve market access in other regions. Another possible strategy would be to link existing multi-country agreements, such as MERCOSUR and the Pacific Alliance, to NAFTA, in effect reviving the idea for a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) under a different structure. Another possibility would be to complete and expand the scope of the MERCOSUR-EU FTA talks, to include other LAC countries. A fourth possible action would be for those countries that are not yet part of the negotiations to "sign on" to the TPP in so far as it is an "open access" agreement.

Nonreciprocal trade preference programs originated in the 1970s under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) as an effort by high-income developed countries to provide tariff concessions for low-income countries. The goal of the programs was to increase export earnings, promote industrialization, and stimulate economic growth in the lower income countries. This study analyzes detailed trade and tariff data for the United States and the European Union (the two largest nonreciprocal preference donors) to determine the extent to which the programs have increased exports from beneficiary countries. For those products where the margins of preference are large and where beneficiaries have a comparative advantage and the capacity to expand prodution, these programs can create adequate incentives leading to a growing export market. The analysis finds that the programs offer significant benefits for some countries, mostly the higher income developing countries. Economic benefits in the least developed countries have been modest. An unanswered question is whether these gains will continue after the incentives are reduced.