The impacts of the World Trade Organization on new members

Abstract

In recent years, there has been intense debate on the effects of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and its predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on global trade, triggered by Rose’s article (2004) suggesting that the WTO/GATT did not promote world trade at all. In addition, Subramanian and Wei (2007) pointed out a series of asymmetries in trade liberalization led by international organizations. In this paper, we estimate the WTO impact on new members considering both total and disaggregated trade flows from 1995 to 2014 using the gravitational model and Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator. The sample includes bilateral imports from 133 countries in the primary, textile, and industrial sectors. This article provides strong evidence that the WTO has promoted new member trade, but weakly and unevenly between developed and developing countries and across sectors examined. Developed countries continued to benefit most from the increase in world trade promoted by the WTO, but more recent liberalization has also brought gains in exports to the group of the least developed countries (LDCs). Furthermore, the gains, although small, are concentrated in primary products.

The characteristic and potential of green trade between China and regional comprehensive economic partnership countries

“…Natural determinants such as GDP, geographical distance, and population have a significant impact on green trade, which is consistent with theoretical expectations (Cardebat and Alexandru, 2013;Borchert and Yotov, 2017). We also found that the population of China and other RCEP countries have different impacts on trade value, which is consistent with the study of Reis et al (2021). This is because the diverse demands of population growth promote international trade, while providing labor and technology for domestic production, which offsets international trade to some extent.…”

The Membership in the World Trade Organization and Trade Policy Space in Developing Countries

“…The literature has also established that the WTO membership has led to a significant expansion of trade, including both exports and imports flows (for example, Allee and Scalera, 2012;Chang and Lee, 2011;dos Reis et al, 2021;Dutt, 2020;Dutt et al 2013;Eicher and Henn, 2011;Larch et al, 2019;Subramanian and Wei, 2007;Tomz et al, 2007). In light of these findings, and given the discussion laid down in sub-section 3.3., we surmise that even though the membership in the WTO has restricted developing countries' trade policy space, countries that have used ingeniously the available trade policy space in WTO law to advance their trade development agenda, are likely the ones that have enjoyed a higher degree of integration into the world trade market.…”

Proteccionismo inverso y política comercial dentro del sistema multilateral de comercio: el caso de las restricciones a la exportación

“…Por lo tanto, está claro que la configuración del sistema multilateral de comercio, como se lo conoce hoy, ha sido resultado de un proceso arduo el cual comenzó en 1947 con la aprobación exitosa de la Carta de La Habana, que también incluía la creación de una figura conocida, en ese entonces, como la Organización Internacional de Comercio (OIC). Así este proyecto se intentaba concebir como una institución internacional para la regulación del comercio entre las partes contratantes del GATT; sin embargo, esta propuesta finalmente fracasó debido a la falta de aprobación del Congreso de los Estados Unidos como también a la falta de voluntad política entre las partes, una situación que sin dudas representó un gran revés para los inicios del sistema multilateral de comercio dada la ausencia de Estados Unidos como líder mundial a nivel económico (REIS, 2009).…”