Trade Policy Flexibilities and Turkey: Tariffs, Anti‐dumping, Safeguards and WTO Dispute Settlement

Abstract

The commitment to lower import tariffs and to maintain tariffs at low levels entails political‐economic trade‐offs. Empirical work examining the relationship between such commitments and the ‘flexibilities’ that policymakers exercise to get around them is still relatively nascent, especially for emerging economies. This paper provides a rich, empirically based assessment of ways that Turkey exercised trade policy flexibilities during the global economic crisis of 2008–11. First, and despite multilateral and customs union commitments that might limit changes to its applied tariffs, Turkey exercised flexibilities during 2008–11 by making changes to both its applied MFN and preferential tariffs that could affect nearly 9 per cent of its manufacturing imports. Second, Turkey's cumulative application of temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies – that is, anti‐dumping, safeguards and countervailing duties – is estimated to impact an additional 4–6 per cent of Turkey's manufacturing imports by 2011. Other surprising results include Turkey's lengthy extensions to the duration of previously imposed anti‐dumping and safeguards beyond expected removal dates, conversion of product coverage from one TTB policy to another, extensive coverage of upstream and downstream segments of important industries and potential deepening of discriminatory preferences already inherent in existing preferential trade agreements.

The Research on Anti-dumping, Cost and Chinese Export: Based on Multilateral Resistance Term of Gravity Model

“…Table 1 shows that the effect of anti-dumping on export is statistically significant and negative, which means that anti-dumping investigation will significantly restrain the growth rate of export. The result of this study similar with Staiger and Wolak(1994), Cuyvers and Dumont(2004), Kongings and Vandenbuche(2008), Pierce(2009)and Bown(2014).…”

“…There are many researches on anti-dumping and export, among which some of them infer that anti-dumping has a negative effect on export (Staiger & Wolak, 1994;Cuyvers & Dumont, 2004;Kongings & Vandenbuche, 2008;Bown, 2014). As the main target of suffering from anti-dumping investigations, the studies on anti-dumping and Chinese export also infer the negative correlation between anti-dumping and export (Shen, 2008;Shen, 2012;Feng & Xiang, 2010;Clinci, 2013;Wang et al,2015).…”

How do countries respond to anti‐dumping filings? Dispute settlement and retaliatory anti‐dumping

“…3 At the time we started this research, we observed anti-dumping filings through 2014 and so limit our sample to the period from 1995 to 2011 to allow up to 3 years for a country to file a retaliatory dispute at the WTO. 4 Bown (2014) examines, for Turkey, recent patterns in usage of various forms of trade protection. Limao and Tovar (2011) examine the trade policy choice between tariffs and non-tariff barriers, also using Turkish data.…”

“… Bown () examines, for Turkey, recent patterns in usage of various forms of trade protection. Limao and Tovar () examine the trade policy choice between tariffs and non‐tariff barriers, also using Turkish data. …”

FDI and Economic Growth in Developing Countries: A Cross Comparison between Egypt and Turkey

“…Turkey has a duty free two-way trade with EU except in agricultural products. Moreover, Turkey mainly trades with countries with which it has free trade agreements (Bown, 2014).…”