欧盟的反倾销关税削减之贸易政策的替代essay

摘要

在世界贸易体系目前形式旨在减少贸易壁垒。事实上，就大部分发达经济体而言，过去成功地达成多边贸易谈判导致大量关税消减。然而，有其他形式的进口保护也发生了吗？随后是否有大量的关税减让被使用其他形式的进口保护所取代？在本文中，我们实证研究谈判达成的外部关税的削减和随后欧盟使用反倾销诉讼之间的关系。证据发现乌拉圭回合关税的更大幅度的削减增加了随后的反倾销调查的概率。

欧洲的反倾销政策和乌拉圭回合谈判关税的消减

传统的进口保护措施的执行通过关税与贸易总协(GATT)定支持下的多边贸易谈判和世界贸易组织（WTO），被越来越多的限制。鉴于全球关税降低的措施，在非关税壁垒和或有保护措施的使用显著增加，促使一些评论家表示关注这些潜在的保护政策的替代品。
 

Abstract
The world trading system in its current form aims at reducing multilateral trade barriers across
the board. Indeed, the last successfully concluded multilateral trade negotiations led to substantial tariff concessions on the part of most developed economies. What, however, happened to other forms of import protection? Have substantial tariff concessions subsequently been replaced by the use of alternative forms of import protection? In this paper we empirically investigate the relationship between negotiated external tariff cuts and the subsequent use of antidumping actions by the EU. Evidence is found for larger Uruguay Round tariff cuts increasing the probability of subsequent antidumping investigations.

European Antidumping Policy and Uruguay Round Tariff Concessions

The use of traditional measures of import protection has been increasingly restricted by multilateral trade negotiations under the auspices of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). In light of globally declining tariffs and quantitative measures, the remarkable increase in the use of non-tariff barriers and contingent protection measures has prompted several commentators to express concerns over their use as potential protection substitutes.

 Antidumping measures feature prominently amongst the forms of alternative import protection and their use tends to be much less constrained by coordinated, multilateral trade agreements. Given the way in which antidumping policies and procedures are designed and implemented, an alternative channel for protection lobbying emerges providing ample room for political-economy influences and hence a rationale for the substitution of trade policy instruments.

This paper investigates the hypothesis of trade policy substitution, following a major, coordinated trade reform, by examining the relationship between multilateral tariff concessions and the subsequent use of antidumping actions by the European Union (EU). Motivated by Anderson and Schmitt’s (2003) theoretical contribution, which provides a theoretical framework for an increasing use of antidumping measures following binding tariff and quota restrictions, we address the substitution hypothesis by focusing on the impact of the Uruguay Round tariff cuts on subsequent EU antidumping investigations at a detailed HS 8-digit product-country level. The Uruguay Round substantially reduced bound MFN tariffs for most signatory countries and also required its signatory countries to ‘tariffy’ and reduce quantitative restrictions. Given that antidumping actions largely remain WTO-unconstrained, we argue that the Uruguay Round trade agreements may represent a suitable policy setting for a potential substitution effect of declining tariff protection for an enhanced use of product-country level antidumping measures. Our results provide support for Anderson and Schmitt’s (2003) theoretical contribution. A statistically highly significant, however in absolute size limited, positive impact of bound MFN tariff cuts on the probability of subsequent antidumping investigations is found; having controlled for other influences. Employing a variety of different econometric techniques, including random-effects and a Chamberlain- Mundlak approach to control for unobserved heterogeneity, this finding is shown to be robust to a series of sensitivity tests.

Our results point to a substitution of different forms of trade policy instruments following the Uruguay Round, with a persistent and statistically highly significant impact of bound MFN tariff concessions on the probability of future antidumping investigations being identified. The average partial effects vary between 0.010 and 0.002, which indicates a positive, but quantitatively limited, probability increase of up to 0.00010 percentage points per one percentage point tariff reduction agreed upon during the UR. Our findings stand in contrast to previous studies in the literature.

These studies either find no statistically viable relationship between tariff liberalization and antidumping measures for developed economies, or even a weak negative link between the latter two forms of import protection as shown by Moore and Zanardi (2011) and Feinberg and Reynolds (2007), respectively.50 Common to both of the latter two studies is that they focus on rather broad industry-level tariff and antidumping actions. However, antidumping measures are, in general, imposed on a very disaggregated product-level, giving rise to a potential bias. Interestingly, our results tend to corroborate those of Bown and Tovar (2011) who analyse HS 6-digit product-level tariff cuts in India and find evidence for tariffs being substituted by an enhanced use of antidumping and safeguard measures. 50 Note that Moore and Zanardi (2011) focus on sectoral applied and not on bound MFN tariff changes between 1991 and 2001. Feinberg and Reynolds (2007) find a significant positive link between bound MFN tariff cuts and subsequent antidumping actions mainly for developing countries and a rather weak negative relationship for traditional AD using countries (i.e. Australia, Canada, EU, New Zealand, and the USA).