The Erosion of Tariff Preferences: The Impact of U.S. Tariff Reductions on Developing Countries

Kara Reynolds

International Trade from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), the program instituted in 1976 that allows developing countries to export thousands of products to the United States duty-free, is an important element of U.S. efforts to promote economic growth in the developing world. However, since the program's inception U.S. tariff rates have fallen significantly, thus potentially reducing the ability of the GSP program to encourage U.S. imports from beneficiary countries. This paper estimates the impact of U.S. tariff reductions on imports from the developing world using a panel of import data from 76 countries and 2,389 GSP-eligible products between 1998 and 2001. It finds that reductions in U.S. tariff rates have diminished imports from developing countries significantly, although some countries have been impacted more than others.

Keywords: Generalized System of Preferences; GSP; Trade Diversion; Preferential Tariffs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F13 F15 O1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2005-07-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 22
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://econwpa.ub.uni-muenchen.de/econ-wp/it/papers/0507/0507001.pdf (application/pdf)

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:wpa:wuwpit:0507001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in International Trade from University Library of Munich, Germany
Bibliographic data for series maintained by EconWPA ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).