With the Doha Round dead if not buried, the United States has no excuse for not acting on its rhetoric and providing improved market access for all of the world’s least developed countries.
After a longer-than expected settling in period, the Obama administration is finally moving on trade policy. What is unclear - and the early signs are troubling - is whether U.S. policy will also encompass the president's promise to use trade as a tool of development.
In this note, CGD fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott discusses how flexible rules of origin can improve trade for the least developed countries.
In this brief Kimberly Ann Elliott discusses the two main priorities the Obama administration should focus on in order to revive the AGOA program and expand its benefits.
Cutting tariffs across the board on Pakistani exports would expand economic opportunities and increase stability in Pakistan with vanishingly small effects on U.S. producers.
The CGD Working Group on Global Trade Preference Reform shows how changes to trade preference programs could greatly benefit those living in the poorest countires at very little cost to preference-giving countries.
This brief summarizes the findings of the CGD Global Trade Preference Reform Working Group and its recommendations to make preference programs better promote prosperity and stability in the world's poorest countries.
This paper examines the potential benefits and costs of providing duty-free, quota-free market access to the least developed countries (LDCs), and the effects of extending eligibility to other small and poor countries.
CGD senior fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott submitted a written statement for the congressional record following the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee hearing on preference reform. Elliott urges policymakers to consider the special needs of the poorest countries as they debate the future of U.S. trade programs.
Despite six decades of trade liberalization, trade policies in rich countries still discriminate against the exports of the world’s poorest countries. Much remains to be done to achieve the goal of meaningful market access for the poorest countries, including reformed rules of origin that facilitate rather than inhibit trade.
Many Americans see trade openness as a threat. Yet access to rich-country markets is crucial for poor people in developing countries to improve their lives. In a new CGD brief based on her essay in The White House and the World: A Global Development Agenda for the Next U.S. President, senior fellow Kimberly Elliott suggests a trade policy approach that would address Americans’ concerns and still be pro-poor. One ingredient: treat market access for the world’s poorest countries as a development issue, not trade policy.
READ THE BRIEF
By any measure, the United States is one of the most open economies in the world—importing more than $1 trillion worth of goods duty-free in 2006 alone. Yet poor nations still pay much higher U.S. tariffs than rich countries—an average of 15 percent on a quarter of their imports, compared to 2-5 percent for rich countries. Not only is this unfair, it also undermines American interests by hindering growth in the poorest countries, thereby making them more vulnerable to epidemic diseases, terrorists, and transnational criminal organizations. In this new CGD Brief, senior fellow Kimberly Ann Elliott makes the case for the U.S. to fix this problem by permanently granting all least-developed countries 100% duty-free, quota-free market access and simplifying rules of orgin.
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In this brief we focus on potential disruptions in poor countries and the policy priorities for coping with them. In particular, we recommend that the United States, which is the only rich country that does not grant tariff-free access for imports from all least-developed countries, provide this access as quickly as possible. In addition, to take advantage of any resulting opportunities, beneficiary countries must adopt domestic reforms to encourage greater productivity.