The Evolution of the Treatment of Agriculture in Preferential Trade Agreements

Clara Thompson-Lipponen and Jared Greenville
Additional contact information
Clara Thompson-Lipponen: OECD
Jared Greenville: OECD

No 126, OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Preferential trading agreements are becoming a more common feature of the global agro food trading environment, a trend that has increased since the early 2000s. While they increasingly cover the majority of trade worldwide, there remains a question as to the extent to which their treatment of agriculture has changed over time, and whether the liberalising elements contained in these agreements are increasingly addressing distortions in world agro-food markets. This paper presents findings on the evolution of the treatment of agriculture within preferential trade agreements. Changes in various aspects of liberalisation achieved through these agreements have been explored, such as provisions related to market access, export competition and domestic support. The report finds that agriculture appears to be increasingly treated in a similar manner to other goods trade, with expansion in the scope of agreements extending to agriculture. Agreements are delivering reduced tariffs among members across the majority of agricultural commodities – however, heterogeneity of rules of origin between agreements is likely to be undermining these benefits. Reflecting multilateral rules, provisions related to Sanitary and Phytosanitary measures and Technical Barriers to Trade have become a standard feature of agreements. Overall, preferential trade agreements are strongly influenced by the multilateral framework.

Keywords: Agricultural trade; regional trade agreements (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F60 Q17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-02-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-int
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1787/751d274f-en (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oec:agraaa:126-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().