working paper TRADE BARRIERS Kym Anderson Trade Barriers and Subsidies: Multilateral and Regional Reform Opportunities Kym Anderson University of Adelaide, Australian National University and CEPR
[email protected] January 2012 Draft paper for the Copenhagen Consensus 201 2 (CC12) Project. This draws on Anderson ’s earlier CC04 and CC08 papers which appears in Global Crises, Global Solutions, edited by B. Lomborg, Cambridge University Press, 2004 and 2009. Thanks are due to Nanda Ary al for research assistance with the benefit/cost cal culus and to the Copenhagen Consensus Cent re and the Australian Resear ch Council for fina ncial support. The views expressed ar e t he author’s alone. Contact: Kym Anderson, George Gollin Professor of Economics, School of Economics, University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005 Australia. Phone +61 8 8303 4712, Fax +61 8 8223 1460,
[email protected] Abstract Numerous barriers to international trade in goods, in some services, and in capital flows have been reduced considerably over the past three decades. Even so, many remain. Such policies harm most the economies imposing them, but the worst of the merchandise barriers (in agriculture and textiles) are particularly harmful to the world’s poorest people. This paper focuses on how costly those anti-poor trade policies are, and examines possible strategies to reduce remaining distortions. The opportunities addressed include completing the stalled Doha Development Agenda process at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and three different ways of freeing up trade in the biggest part of the world economy not yet covered by a comprehensive regional integration agreement, namely the Asia-Pacific region.