Assigning Blame at APEC
The Asia Times carried an op-ed piece on November 10 headlined “Clock Winds Down On APEC“. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation group of 21 countries meets this week in Singapore and author Megawati Wijaya has it right that APEC hasn’t lived up to its promise and certainly hasn’t done much to forestall protectionism in the region. She draws attention to the fact that average tariffs in the region have dropped from 17% to 5.5% between 1989 and 2004, though I doubt that APEC meetings had much to do with that. She argues that current protectionist moves among APEC members got their start with the “Buy America” language that was included in the U.S. stimulus legislation passed early this year, and follows that with four paragraphs enumerating actions taken by the Obama Administration against China, and China’s tit-for-tat responses. I won’t defend Washington or Beijing, but Ms. Megawati has missed a few things and has her causation all wrong. Let’s take a quick look at what moves other APEC members have pulled this year.
Will They Slow Down The Protectionists?
Australia has antidumping investigations going against products from the United States, China, Indonesia (somebody doesn’t like cheap toilet paper), Malaysia, Canada and Germany, and a countervailing duty case against China. Canada has antidumping cases in progress against the United States, China, Ukraine and Vietnam, and a countervailing duty case against Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Chile has imposed antidumping duties on Argentine flour. Taiwan has asked its schools and colleges to favor local products and companies in construction projects, and has raised or delayed some of the customs duties it had lowered earlier. Indonesia‘s new import restrictions could be the subject of a whole separate post. These include new tariffs on processed milk products from more than twenty countries, a safeguard investigation into wire from ten countries, buy national rules and film import restrictions, tariff increases that impact at least 66 countries, new import requirements on more than 500 products, and much more.
Japan has initiated safeguard actions against food products from the United States, Netherlands, China, Belgium, Afghanistan, Australia, Denmark, Germany, Singapore, Canada, Chile, France, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Morocco, New Zealand, Norway and the Philippines. South Korea joins the fray with an antidumping investigation into sodium hydrosulphite from China, and has raised tariffs on 16 products from 56 countries. Mexico imposed antidumping duties on toilet sprayers from China (what is it about toilet products?) and raised tariffs on a whole bunch of products from the United States. New Zealand continued antidumping duties against Greek peaches, and is reviewing duties on products from China and Malaysia. Peru is investigating dumped or subsidized products from Mexico, China, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, India, Pakistan, Turkey and the United States. Steel bars from Russia, Korea, Japan and China are subject to a safeguard action in the Philippines.
Russia has imposed “temporary” duty increases on machinery and snowmobiles from 57 countries, introduced a “Buy Russia” policy that predates the American stimulus package, and much, much more. Indonesian, Thai and Malaysian rubber producers have apparently tried to raise the world price of rubber through their International Tripartite Rubber Council. Vietnam has increased customs duties on milk products from thirteen countries and on steel products from 25 countries.
The point is not to excoriate these countries. Many of their actions are fully justified under WTO rules and some have also reduced other trade barriers this year. My purpose is to destroy the argument that the blame for protectionism rests on Washington and Beijing. All countries need to act intelligently.
My thanks to Global Trade Alert. They make it a whole lot easier to track this stuff.
