The Disadvantage of Membership: How Joining the GATT/WTO Undermines GSP

Tobin, Jennifer; Busch, Marc L.

doi:10.1017/s1474745618000034

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Donor countries use GSP to provide developing country beneficiaries additional market access, going beyond most favored nation treatment. Beyond the requirement to exclude high-income countries from eligibility and to respect the nondiscrimination principle (but see Tobin and Busch 2018), GATT allows each developed nation to set its program’s rules. GSP programs are “general” in that donors are supposed to provide the same access for the same products to all recipient nations, with an allowance for multiple program tiers.…”

Section: Gsp Programs and Rights-based Conditionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting Workers Abroad and Industries at Home: Rights-based Conditionality in Trade Preference Programs

Hafner-Burton

Mosley

Galantucci

2018

Journal of Conflict Resolution

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A growing number of developed country governments link good governance, including human rights, to developing countries’ access to aid, trade, and investment. We consider whether governments enforce these conditions sincerely, in response to rights violations, or whether such conditions might instead be used as a veil for protectionist policies, motivated by domestic concerns about import competition. We do so via an examination of the world’s most important unilateral trade preference program, the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which includes worker rights as one criterion for program access. We argue that the two-tiered structure of the GSP privileges some domestic interests at one level, while disadvantaging them at the other. Using a new data set on all US GSP beneficiary countries and sanctioning measures from 1986 to 2013, we demonstrate that labor rights outcomes play a role in the maintenance of country-level trade benefits and that import competition does not condition the application of rights-based criteria at this level. At the same, however, the US government does not consider worker rights in the elements (at the country-product level) of the program that have the greatest material impact. The result is a situation in which the US government talks somewhat sincerely at the country level in its rights-based conditionality, but its behavior at the country-product level cheapens this talk.

show abstract

Section: Gsp Programs and Rights-based Conditionalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Protecting Workers Abroad and Industries at Home: Rights-based Conditionality in Trade Preference Programs

Hafner-Burton

Mosley

Galantucci

2018

Journal of Conflict Resolution

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It is widely supported in recent empirical applications (e.g. Hayakawa et al, 2020;Kox & Rojas-Romagosa, 2020;Tobin & Busch, 2019).…”

Section: Structural Gravity Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the trade effects of bilateral SPS measures in developed and developing countries

Santeramo

Lamonaca

2022

World Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The agri-food trade has expanded considerably over decades, with a remarkable increase in the market share of developing countries. The upward trend in trade flows has been parallel to the proliferation of non-tariff measures, particularly of sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures in the agri-food sector. SPS measures may have a dual impact on trade, that is. standards as catalysts versus standards as barriers, and the net effect is likely to depend on the level of economic development of countries involved. We investigate whether the trade effects of SPS measures are correlated with the economic development of trading partners. In particular, we disentangle the trade effects of SPS measures implemented by developed and developing countries and look at differential impacts due to a mismatch in the economic development of trading partners. Using a structural gravity approach on bilateral trade and regulation data, we conclude that SPS measures are catalysts for developing importers, whereas no evidence is found for developed importers. We also find a pro-trade effect of SPS measures when traders have different levels of economic development. Our findings have important policy implications: sharing SPS measures is strategic for economies characterised by different abilities to alter trade terms.

show abstract

“…In fact, Gil-Pareja et al (2014) have obtained that NRTPs have led to an expansion of beneficiaries' exports to preference-granting countries, with the cumulative impact ranging from 26% after 4 years to 88% after 8 years. Tobin (2019) has observed that while GSP programs have increased developing countries' trade, they tend to trade (including to import) less under the GSP schemes (compared to GSP recipients that do not join the multilateral trading system) when they become GATT or WTO Members. The author has explained this outcome by the fact that by joining the GATT/WTO, countries enjoy non-discriminatory and hence more predictable (i.e., less subject to ad hoc conditionality) GSP programs.…”

Section: Background On Non-reciprocal Trade Preferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Aid for Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows on the Utilization of Unilateral Trade Preferences Offered by the QUAD Countries

Gnangnon

Iyer

2022

J. Intl Econ. Comm. Policy.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper investigates the effect of Aid for Trade (AfT) flows and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, as well as their interplay on the utilization of non-reciprocal trade preferences (NRTPs) offered by the Quadrilaterals (i.e., QUAD countries, which are Canada, the European Union, Japan, and the United States). Two major blocks of NRTPs provided by the QUAD countries have been considered, namely, the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) programs and other NRTPs. The analysis has covered 114 beneficiary countries of these NRTPs and the period of 2002–2018. Several findings have emerged from the analysis. Total AfT flows and FDI inflows contribute to enhancing the utilization rate of both GSP programs and other NRTPs, and are strongly complementary in affecting positively the utilization of both types of NRTPs. Finally, beneficiary countries’ level of export product diversification matters for the effect of both AfT flows and FDI inflows on the utilization of NRTPs. The conclusion section discusses the implications of these findings.

show abstract

The Disadvantage of Membership: How Joining the GATT/WTO Undermines GSP

Cited by 11 publications

References 30 publications

Protecting Workers Abroad and Industries at Home: Rights-based Conditionality in Trade Preference Programs

Protecting Workers Abroad and Industries at Home: Rights-based Conditionality in Trade Preference Programs

On the trade effects of bilateral SPS measures in developed and developing countries

Effect of Aid for Trade and Foreign Direct Investment Inflows on the Utilization of Unilateral Trade Preferences Offered by the QUAD Countries

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About