Publication: Trade Policy Flexibilities and Turkey : Tariffs, Antidumping, Safeguards, and WTO Dispute Settlement
Date
2013-01
ISSN
Published
2013-01
Author(s)
Abstract
Trade policy commitments to lower import
tariffs and to maintain tariffs at low levels entail short
and long-run political-economic costs and benefits.
Empirical work examining the relationship between such
commitments and the exercise of trade policy flexibilities
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 applied tariffs,
Turkey made changes to both its applied Most Favored Nation
and preferential tariffs that cumulatively affect nearly 9
percent of manufacturing imports and 10 percent of import
product lines. Second, Turkey's cumulative application
of temporary trade barrier (TTB) policies -- antidumping,
safeguards and countervailing duties -- are estimated to
impact by 2011 an additional 4 percent of imports and 6
percent of product lines. Other surprising results on
Turkey's use of flexibilities include: extending the
duration of previously imposed antidumping and safeguards
beyond expected removal dates, removing one TTB policy over
a set of products and immediately reapplying a different TTB
policy, covering lengthy upstream and downstream segments of
important industries, and deepening discriminatory
preference margins already inherent in existing preferential
trade agreements.
Citation
“Bown, Chad P.. 2013. Trade Policy Flexibilities and Turkey : Tariffs, Antidumping, Safeguards, and WTO Dispute Settlement. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 6322. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/b93047be-4957-5810-bba3-df0b52963899 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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