Publication: Is Protectionism on the Rise? Assessing National Trade Policies during the Crisis of 2008
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Date
2013-03
ISSN
1530-9142
Published
2013-03
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This paper quantifies trade policy changes and the associated trade impacts for about 100 countries between 2008 and 2009. Results show that there has been no widespread increase in protectionism. Only a few countries, including Russia, Argentina, Turkey, and China, have increased tariffs on major imported products. The United States and the EU, by contrast, rely mainly on antidumping duties to shield domestic industries. Overall, while the rise in tariffs and antidumping duties may have jointly caused global trade to drop by US$43 billion, it explains less than 2% of the collapse in world trade during the crisis period.
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Publication Is Protectionism on the Rise? Assessing National Trade Policies during the Crisis of 2008(2010-04-01)To understand the role of trade policies in the crisis of 2008, this paper constructs the overall trade restrictiveness indices for a wide range of countries using their tariff schedules in 2008 and 2009. The index summarizes the trade policy stance of a country, taking into account the share of each good in trade as well as its corresponding import demand elasticity. Results show that there is no widespread increase in protectionism via tariff policies since the global financial crisis has unfolded. While many countries have adjusted tariffs upward on selected products, only a handful of countries, such as Malawi, Russia, Argentina, Turkey and China focus on products that have significant impacts on trade flows. The United States and the European Union, by contrast, rely mainly on anti-dumping duties to shield domestic industries. 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World Trade Organization disciplines raise the cost of using trade policies for member countries and have proved to be a stable foundation for the open multilateral trading system that has been built over the last fifty years. This paper empirically examines the power of these and other theories to explain the observed pattern of trade policy responses to the 2008 crisis, using trade and protection data for seven large emerging market countries that have a history of active use of trade policy. Vertical specialization (global fragmentation) is found to be the most powerful economic factor determining trade policy responses.Publication Taking Stock of Trade Protectionism Since 2008(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-12)The onset of the financial crisis in September 2008 and the subsequent 'Great Trade Collapse' (Baldwin 2009), many countries actively used trade policy instruments as part of their response to the global recession. 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