Publication: Safeguards and Antidumping in Latin American Trade Liberalization
Date
2008-07
ISSN
Published
2008-07
Author(s)
Finger, J. Michael
Nogues, Julio J.
Abstract
The binding of tariff rates and adoption
of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade
Organization-sanctioned safeguards and antidumping
mechanisms provided the basis to remove a multitude of
instruments of protection in the Latin American countries
discussed in this paper. At the same time, they helped in
maintaining centralized control over the management of
pressures for protection in agencies with economy-wide
accountabilities. The World Trade Organization's
procedural requirements (for example, to follow published
criteria, or participation by interested parties) helped
leaders to change the culture of decision-making from one
based on relationships to one based on objective criteria.
However, when Latin American governments attempted to
introduce economic sense - such as base price comparisons on
an economically sensible measure of long-run international
price rather than the more generous constructed cost concept
that is the core of WTO rules - protection-seekers used the
rules against them. They pointed out that World Trade
Organization rules do not require the use of such criteria,
nor do procedures in leading users (industrial countries)
include such criteria. In sum, the administrative content of
the rules supported liberalization; the economic content did not.
Citation
“Finger, J. Michael; Nogues, Julio J.. 2008. Safeguards and Antidumping in Latin American Trade Liberalization. Policy Research Working Paper No. 4680. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/43c3eaa7-2985-5b35-bb77-62157859a37d License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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