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A unilateral trade reform generates two opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using detailed trade and firm-level data from France, we investigate how French firms' product scope and export sales changed after Chinese liberalization vis-à-vis Asian liberalization. Our findings suggest that lower Chinese import tariffs account on average for 7 percent of the new products exported by French firms, and for 18 percent of additional French export sales. These results are robust when accounting for foreign competition faced by French firms in the liberalized market.

Analyzing the experience of Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Lessons from NAFTA aims to provide guidance to Latin American and Caribbean countries considering free trade agreements with the United States. The authors conclude that the treaty raised external trade and foreign investment inflows and had a modest effect on Mexico’s average income per person. It is likely that the treaty also helped achieve a modest reduction in poverty and an improvement in job quality. This book will be of interest to scholars and policymakers interested in international trade and development. \"The best quantitative evaluation of NAFTA¯where it paid off, where it didn’t, and where we don't know. Indispensable for every Latin American and Caribbean country considering a free trade pact with the United States.\" —Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Reginald Jones Senior Fellow Institute for International Economics \"Lessons from NAFTA is a well-articulated and insightful book that covers many of the relevant areas related to the Agreement. In a hemisphere plenty of trade negotiations among Latin American countries and United States, this report written by leading trade and development researchers will be a crucial reference to analyze the impact of these agreements. As the authors mention, to grasp the new opportunities requires countries to be aware that 'improving macroeconomic performance and institutions and putting in place an education and innovation system' are areas that cannot be solved through FTAs. The onus remains on domestic policy.\" —Jose Luis Machinea, Executive Secretary of the United Nations' Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, former Finance Minister of Argentina.

The report provides a preliminary assessment of DR-CAFTA, with particular attention to three key themes: (i) expected trade and non-trade benefits, (ii) actions that Central American countries need to pursue to capitalize optimally on the new opportunities, and (iii) identification of the population groups that may require assistance to adapt to a more competitive environment. The Introductory Chapter reviews the main findings of the report. Chapter II places DR-CAFTA in the historical context of the economic reforms that Central America has been undertaking since the late 1980s. Chapter III provides a summary overview of the recently negotiated DR-CAFTA. Chapter IV reviews various analyses that assess the potential impacts of DR-CAFTA in Central American countries. Chapter V focuses on the identification of potentially affected populations from the easing of trade restrictions in sensitive agricultural products and analyzes policy options to assist vulnerable groups. Chapter VI reviews evidence related to key macroeconomic implications of DR-CAFTA, namely the potential revenue losses and effect on the patterns of business-cycle synchronization. Chapter VII reviews evidence from each Central American country in the areas of trade facilitation, institutional and regulatory reforms, and innovation and education, in order to identify key priorities for the complementary agenda for DR-CAFTA.

On 1 January 2024, Switzerland will implement a major trade policy reform by autonomously eliminating all tariffs on imports of industrial products regardless of their origin. After a brief review of the literature on unilateral trade liberalization and the current Swiss tariff landscape, this paper presents the motivation and the substance of the reform. The elimination of industrial tariffs will reduce the net fiscal burden on imports by around CHF 600 million per year. In addition, imports will be easier to administer, as the Swiss customs tariff will be simplified (thanks to a reduction in tariff numbers) and proofs of origin will no longer be required for goods that remain in Switzerland. We summarize the main findings of studies carried out in the run-up to the reform. The political process and debates leading up to parliamentary approval of the reform, its reception in international fora and the ongoing work on implementation are presented as well. I conclude that the difficult process of obtaining parliamentary approval confirms the insights from the political economy literature that unilateral trade liberalization is politically difficult to achieve in a purely domestic context, despite the economic benefits it brings. From an economic perspective, the contribution of unilateral liberalization to domestic market opening is substantial and has certain advantages, also in comparison to other trade policy instruments such as free trade agreements (FTAs). Unilateral liberalization and preferential liberalization through FTAs need not be mutually exclusive but can be seen as complementary trade policy tools.

This paper proposes a unique overview of trade policies since 2001, based on detailed data on tariffs and trade covering 130 countries. It shows that regionalism has delivered limited liberalization, representing only a 0.3 percentage point (p.p.) cut in the worldwide average applied tariff between 2001 and 2013. WTO commitments (1.0 p.p. average cut) and unilateral liberalizations on a most-favored-nation basis (1.3 p.p.) mattered far more. The study also shows that GVC participation was a powerful motivation underlying tariff liberalizations, including those carried out at governments’ own initiative. The paper finally assess that recent trade policy changes more than halved the worldwide welfare gains expected from multilateral tariff-cutting. If all PTA negotiations were concluded, gains would fall to one-third of their 2001 level.

Unilateral preferences aim at increasing exports from developing countries via reductions on applied tariffs and the incentives created by the preference margin. After decades of existence, the evidence as to the extent to which preferential schemes have been genuinely effective in increasing exports is mixed. This paper evaluates the impact of the European Union’s (EU) unilateral preferential regimes on the exports of developing countries using a bilateral gravity model at the product level. We use a unique dataset that allows us to determine the actual tariff rate paid by each export flow at the product level (combined nomenclature CN-10 digits) to the EU and the preferential regime of entry. This allows us to accurately specify the impact of each trade regime and to properly address the issue of utilisation and non-utilisation of trade preferences. The most important findings of the paper are that unilateral preferences have been effective in increasing exports to the EU both as a result of the direct effect of lower tariffs and positive preference margin, and because of secondary effects associated with the preference regimes; although the outcome of these secondary effects depends on the margin of trade considered.