Accords commerciaux régionaux
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Market Access Provisions on Trade in Goods in Regional Trade Agreements
This paper assembles detailed information on the market access provisions in trade in goods contained in 192 active regional trade agreements (RTAs) notified to the WTO as of November 2010. Although market access provisions in trade in goods in RTAs have been addressed in a number of studies much of this work has been limited to subsets of RTAs particularly plurilateral RTAs involving three or more parties. The goal of the current study is to expand beyond the more commonly studied RTAs and to include all RTAs notified to the WTO for which data are available. This task has been facilitated by the recent Transparency Mechanism for RTAs (TM) adopted in 2006 that provides the basis for the systematic provision of detailed tariff and trade data by WTO Members engaged in RTAs. This information has been supplemented by other public sources of data where available. A number of trends are evident. While a majority of RTAs result in a reasonably high degree of liberalization overall (with developing countries often liberalizing as much or more than developed countries) liberalization is not uniform across products or RTA parties. In some RTAs the degree of iberalization appears to be a negotiated outcome depending on the RTA partner. Agricultural goods continue to be subject to lower levels of liberalization frequent product exclusions and systematic protection in some RTAs regardless of the RTA partner's comparative advantage. Nonetheless a lower level of ambition in some RTAs is tempered by a commitment to negotiate further concessions or expand upon the RTA's scope at some future point: more than half the RTAs analysed contain such a commitment. Much has been written about the potential for the multilateralization of commitments undertaken in RTAs. While there may be scope for positive externalities in terms of regulatory convergence particularly with regard to services liberalization undertaken in RTAs there is less evidence in this study to suggest that increased market access in merchandise goods leads to a more favourable trading environment for third parties. Continuing constructive engagement by WTO Members in the Transparency Mechanism through the provision of data timely notifications and submission of implementation reports will increase the availability of tariff and trade liberalization data thus facilitating further examination of the topics highlighted in the study as worthy of future research.
Intellectual Property Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
This paper assembles detailed information about the intellectual property (IP) provisions contained in 194 active regional trade agreements (RTAs) that had been notified to the WTO by November 2010. IP provisions in RTAs have been the subject of much study and commentary. However much of this work has focused on a relatively limited number of RTAs with a concentration on parties with narrow geographical and economic profiles. The goal of the current study was to expand beyond the more commonly studied RTAs to make an initial review of the full array of RTAs notified to the WTO and in that way to lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive overview that would enable consideration of the broader system implications of this more diverse range of norm-setting activity. This was tackled by conducting a comprehensive mapping of the IP content in a larger number of RTAs involving parties from all regions and across different levels of development. This broad approach is necessary to better understand cross-cutting trends in RTAs and how all the parts of the international IP framework influence each other. The methodology followed involved surveying each RTA in the sample to determine whether it made reference to any of 30 different IP-related provisions. The relevant provisions are discussed in detail and summary statistics used to identify patterns over time and by continent level of economic development and selected traders. The number of IP provisions in each RTA is then used to classify agreements according to their level of IP content. The first significant identified trend is the acceleration in the conclusion of RTAs with IP provisions after the creation of the WTO and the entry into force of the WTO TRIPS Agreement. A significant proportion of those RTAs contain some type of IP provision but the number and type of those provisions vary widely across agreements. More than two-thirds of the RTAs surveyed include provisions on border measures or statements of general commitment to IP protection or cooperation. A smaller proportion contains explicit provisions on specific fields of IP law such as geographical indications patents trademarks and copyright. The inclusion of even more detailed provisions elaborating on specific areas of IP law is less common. As a result the actual IP content of RTAs differs greatly across the sample with about 40% of these agreements found to have negligible substantive IP standards. A significant number of RTAs containing more detailed IP provisions are characterized by a hub-andspoke architecture in which the wording and structure of IP provisions converged around the RTAs of specific countries or blocs. The largest systems are grouped around the EFTA the European Union and the United States with countries like Chile Japan and Mexico constituting other hubs. The huband- spoke architecture seems to have encouraged the convergence of domestic IP regimes among the respective RTA signatories. The mechanics of this potentially crucial process and its economic implications require further investigation. The analytical methodology followed in this paper also needs additional development to take better advantage of the information gathered together in the course of this study and other data.
Services Rules in Regional Trade Agreements
The study tries first to assess the extent of similarities and divergences among services rules in regional trade agreements as compared to the GATS. To do so it uses a typology identifying variations in 48 key provisions structured under seven themes commonly found in RTAs and using the GATS as a benchmark. The analysis identifies two main “families” of agreements GATSinspired and NAFTA-inspired) and a residual category. The paper briefly explores the historical development that led to these families as well as their geographical spread both on an agreement by agreement basis and a country by country basis. The paper then analyses by theme the variations found in the RTAs among services rules including their novelty as compared to the GATS. Given the lack of available information on the implementation of the agreements the paper tries to assess whenever possible the magnitude of the discrepancies and their practical impacts. While subject to some qualifications the results of the study are relatively straight forward: there is no "spaghetti bowl" in services rules but just two "families" and one residual category. The details reveal that the degree of divergence between those two families does not overall seem insurmountable. This assessment concords with other studies (e.g. Marchetti Roy) that have equated them in terms of national treatment and market access and have compared directly commitments undertaken under the three families of agreements. One may even note a certain tendency to a convergence towards the GATS model (e.g. the addition of market access clause in the second generation of NAFTA-like agreements or the use of GATS-type architecture by EU for agreements else than pre-adhesion ones). In terms of "novelty" the results prove somewhat disappointing except in certain areas like mode 4 and transparency. Other issues in which in view of the intensity of WTO DDA debates one would have expected a lot of bilateral creativity such as domestic regulation safeguards and recognition provisions show themselves to be surprisingly embryonic. Finally anecdotal evidence gathered for instance during the drafting by the WTO Secretariat of Trade Policies Reviews and factual presentations on RTAs suggest that in numerous instances provisions relating to future negotiations or even regular meetings are not implemented thereby casting doubt on the effective impact of RTA provisions (including diverging ones) on trade realities.
Poison in the Wine?
Commitments in regional trade agreements (RTAs) that fall short of the same countries' obligations under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) are a relatively frequent phenomenon. However they have gone widely unnoticed in the literature to date and drawn very little attention in relevant WTO fora either. Nevertheless 'minus commitments' are potentially poisonous and for various reasons would deserve close attention. Given the broad definitional scope of the GATS extending inter alia to commercial presence such commitments may impinge upon the rights of third-country investors in the RTA economies. Their existence casts doubts on the legal status of the respective agreements under the GATS and can have severe implications for the trading system overall. If not complemented by comprehensive Most-favoured-Nation clauses the RTAs concerned are disconnected from the WTO and virtually impossible to multilateralize. Based on a review of some 80000 commitments in 66 agreements this study seeks to develop a reasonably comprehensive picture of the frequency of 'minus commitments' and their dosage in terms of sectors measures and modes of supply. It also discusses potential remedies from a WTO perspective.
Big-Think Regionalism: A critical survey
In the late 1940s and 1950s the profession’s best and brightest minds were focused on regionalism: Jacob Viner James Meade Richard Lipsey Harry Johnson and Max Cordon inter alia. The reason was simple. Europe’s post-war architecture was one of the world’s greatest problems and a free trade area was to be part of it economists were muddled over the issue. The thinking of the 1950s straightened out the economics and established the intellectual paradigm that dominated the regionalism literature right up to 1991.1 The paradigm was framed around the Vinerian question: ‘Would a nation gain from joining various preferential trade configurations?’ This literature – what could be called Small-Think Regionalism – ignored systemic implications since the only large preferential arrangement – the EEC – was viewed as sui generis.
Services liberalization in the new generation of preferential trade agreements: How much further than the GATS?
In the context of stalled multilateral trade negotiations preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have continued to proliferate raising important trade and policy issues. Unlike in any other period since the establishment of the multilateral trading system all important trading nations are now involved in PTA discussions of one form or another. In the midst of the recent flurry of PTA activity this paper attempts to fill a gap in the literature by providing a comprehensive evaluation of the liberalization commitments contained in the recent wave of preferential trade agreements on services. Indeed the trade literature has tended to limit its examination of services components of PTAs to the type of rules they contain and to such other characteristics as whether a GATStype positive listing or NAFTA-type negative listing was used in undertaking commitments.
A mapping of regional rules on technical barriers to trade
The progressive elimination of tariff barriers has shifted the attention to other forms of barriers to trade. In particular the recent debate on market access issues highlighted technical barriers to trade (TBTs). These consist of standards technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures. Standards and technical regulations specify the technical characteristics of a product or the conditions under which it is made. Product standards define the requirements of the characteristics of products (such as the level of safety of an electronic device) while production standards are the conditions under which a product must be made (such as the requirement of limited gas emissions). Conformity assessment procedures define the testing procedures necessary to assess the conformity of products to the norms.
Regional Rules in the Global Trading System
The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past two decades has highlighted the need to look closely at the relationships between regional and WTO rules or disciplines. A major obstacle to advancing understanding of RTAs is the absence of detailed information about their contents. This has limited the debate between those who view RTAs as discriminatory instruments hostage to protectionist interests and those who see them as conducive to multilateral trade opening.
Mapping investment provisions in regional trade agreements: towards an international investment regime?
As stated in the introduction to this volume regional trade agreements (RTAs) have been essential not simply in connecting countries through increased trade and investment flows but also in terms of shaping and pushing forward the architecture for conducting international trade. This is certainly true in the area of investment an area in which the multilateral regime is still rather rudimentary and where incipient international disciplines have rather been forged de facto at the bilateral and regional level.
Trade remedy provisions in regional trade agreements
This paper examines trade remedy provisions in regional trade agreements (RTAs). By trade remedies are meant anti-dumping countervailing and emergency or safeguard measures. Anti-dumping and countervailing duties can be levied on exporters who engage in ‘unfair’ trading practices that cause material injury to domestic producers. These unfair trading practices can take the form of selling products below their ‘normal’ price or of benefiting from government-provided subsidies. Safeguard actions can be taken even if there is no unfair trade practice so long as imports have increased to an extent that serious injury has been suffered by domestic producers. No matter the difference in conditions under which they can be triggered all these instruments represent internationally agreed means for a country to temporarily increase the level of trade protection received by its injured domestic industry.
Competition provisions in regional trade agreements
This paper maps and examines competition-related provisions in seventy-four regional trade agreements (RTAs). The template used for the mapping is based on previous work done to map competition-related provisions in RTAs and on recent thoughtful critiques of those approaches. The mapping undertaken in this paper applies to all competition-related provisions of the RTAs and not just to the competition policy chapter. This distinction is important because there are salient competition provisions in the other chapters of regional trade agreements which affect the conditions of competition among suppliers undertakings and enterprises that operate in the markets of RTA members.
Regional Rules on the Global Trading System
The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past two decades has highlighted the need to look closely at the potential conflicts between regional and WTO rules or disciplines. A major obstacle to advancing understanding of RTAs is the absence of detailed information about their contents. This has limited the debate between those who view RTAs as discriminatory instruments hostage to protectionist interests and those who see them as conducive to multilateral trade opening. This book provides detailed analysis of RTA rules in six key areas - market access technical barriers to trade contingent protection investment services and competition policy - across dozens of the main RTAs in the world. The analysis helps to provide new insights into the interplay between regional and multilateral trade rules advances understanding of the economic effects of RTAs and contributes to the discussion on how to deal with the burgeoning number of RTAs.
Introduction
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated around the world in the past decade. Some 200 RTAs currently in force have been notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the number will continue to rise given the many RTAs being proposed and negotiated. It is estimated that if one takes into account RTAs which are in force but have not been notified signed but not yet in force currently being negotiated and in the proposal stage close to 400 RTAs are scheduled to be implemented by 2010 (Fiorentino Verdeja and Toqueboeuf 2006).
Market access provisions in regional trade agreements
Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have proliferated over the past decade around the world to cover nearly half of global trade. The number of RTAs notified to the WTO is approaching 200 while the total number of RTAs around the world exceeds 300. The global RTA spree has forged a veritable spaghetti bowl of multiple and often overlapping agreements. The various rules included in each RTA entangle the bowl further. Besides market access of goods many RTAs today include provisions in such trade disciplines as services investment standards intellectual property and competition rules as well as a host of issues not directly related to trade such as the environment.
R&D in the Network of International Trade
Recent empirical evidence has shown that trade liberalization promotes innovation and productivity growth in individual firms. This paper argues that different types of trade liberalization – multilateral versus regional – may lead to different R&D and productivity levels of firms. Trade agreements between countries are modelled with a network: nodes represent countries and a link between the nodes indicates the existence of a trade agreement. In this framework the multilateral trade agreement is represented by the complete network while the overlap of regional trade agreements is represented by the hub-and-spoke trade system. Trade liberalization which increases the network of trade agreements reinforces the incentives for firms to invest in R&D through the creation of new markets (scale effect) but it may also dampen these incentives through the emergence of new competitors (competition effect). The joint action of these two effects within the multilateral and the regional trade systems gives rise to the result that for the same number of direct trade partners the R&D effort of a country in the multilateral agreement is lower than the R&D effort of a hub but higher than the R&D effort of a spoke. This suggests that a ”core” country within the regional trade system has higher R&D and productivity level than a country with the same number of trade agreements within the multilateral system whereas the opposite is true for a ”periphery” country. Additionally the paper finds that while multilateral trade liberalization boosts productivity of all countries regional trade liberalization increases productivity of core economies but may decrease productivity of periphery economies if the level of competition in the new trade partner countries of the periphery economy is ”too high”. Furthermore the aggregate level of R&D activities within the multilateral trade agreement exceeds that in the star – the simplest representative of the hub-and-spoke trade system.
Trade Remedy Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements
This paper maps and examines the provisions on anti-dumping countervailing duties and safeguards in seventy-four regional trade agreements (RTAs). The RTAs vary in size degree of integration geographic region and the level of economic development of their members. The key policy concern of the paper is that the elastic and selective nature of trade remedies may lead to more discrimination with reduced trade remedy actions against RTA partners but a greater frequency of trade remedy actions against non-members. The adoption of RTAspecific trade remedy rules increases this risk of discrimination with trade remedies against RTA members being abolished outright or being subjected to greater discipline. The templates used for mapping the trade remedy provisions reflect this central concern. The results of the mappings suggest the need to be vigilant about increased discrimination arising from trade remedy rules in RTAs. A number of RTAs have succeeded in abolishing trade remedies. Probit and multinomial logit model estimations suggest that these RTAs are characterized by a higher share of intra-RTA trade and deeper forms of integration that go well beyond the dismantling of border measures. A fairly large number of RTAs have adopted RTA-specific rules that tighten discipline on the application of trade remedies on RTA members. In the case of anti-dumping for example some provisions increase de minimis volume and dumping margin requirements and shorten the duration for applying anti-dumping duties relative to the WTO Anti-dumping Agreement. In similar fashion many of the provisions on bilateral safeguards lead to tightened discipline or reduce the incentives to take safeguard actions. Safeguard measures can be imposed only during the transition period have shorter duration periods and require compensation if put in place. Further retaliation is allowed if there is no agreement on compensation. RTA provisions on global safeguards require that under certain conditions RTA partners be exempted from multilateral safeguard actions. This conflicts with multilateral rules which require that safeguard measures be applied to all sources of imports and highlights the problem of trade diversion. A small number of RTAs give a role to regional institutions to conduct anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations and to review final determinations of national authorities. There is a theoretical presumption and some empirical evidence to suggest that this reduces the frequency of anti-dumping initiations and final determinations against RTA members. In the case of CVDs we are unable to find major innovations in CVD rules and practice by past and present RTAs. A major reason for this may be the absence of commitments in the RTA on meaningful or significant curbs on subsidies or state aid.