Market Access For Developing Countries

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the industrial countries. This article focuses on protection in merchandise trade. The liberalization of trade in services, which is generally subject to far greater restrictions, offers opportunities for developing countries that, according to some estimates, are even greater than in merchandise trade (for instance, in labor-intensive services that require the temporary movement of workers (World Bank, 2002)).
Patterns of protection
Developing and industrial countries both pay dearly for protectionism. Estimates from a variety of sources (in particular, World Bank, 2002) of annual static welfare gains from eliminating barriers to merchandise trade range from $250 billion to $620 billion, of which one-third to one-half would accrue to developing countries. The response of investment and technology to a freer international trade regime would generate additional dynamic gains.
And yet protection persists, in many guises and to a greater extent than is revealed by the customary references to average most-favored-nation (MFN) tariffs. These do not reflect specific tariffs and tariff-rate quotas, trade remedies such as antidumping duties, and the effects of rules of origin and environmental and technical standards. Nor do the averages capture the impact of tariff peaks and escalation, preference schemes, or measures that contribute to the uncertainty of market access and therefore discourage export expansion.
Table 1 presents the combined ad valorem tariff equivalents (AVEs) (import tariffs as a percentage of the value or price of imported products) of various protectionist measures from the perspective of groups of exporting countries. It shows that, while Canadian and European Union (EU) barriers hit low- and middle-income exporters hardest, Japanese (in agriculture) and U.S. protection is highest on the products exported by the least developed countries (LDCs).
Specific tariffs and tariff-rate quotas. These account for a significant ...