A Special Safeguard Mechanism for Agricultural Imports and the Management of Reform
The record of traditional safeguard provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and the World Trade Organization provides useful information about how a special agricultural safeguard might be made effective. The success of existing sa...
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Language: | English |
Published: |
2012
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Online Access: | http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/main?menuPK=64187510&pagePK=64193027&piPK=64187937&theSitePK=523679&menuPK=64187510&searchMenuPK=64187283&siteName=WDS&entityID=000158349_20090707095400 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4181 |
Summary: | The record of traditional safeguard
provisions of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and
the World Trade Organization provides useful information
about how a special agricultural safeguard might be made
effective. The success of existing safeguard or flexibility
provisions to sustain long-run liberalization programs stems
from their requiring objective, transparent, and
participatory decisions on the application of the import
restrictions they allow. The proposed special agricultural
safeguard expands by arithmetic formula the bounds within
which a Member may impose a new import restriction.
Analysis reported here suggests that the formulas provide a
poor guide for policy, indicating that they would frequently
prescribe action that is not needed and fail to prescribe
action when it would be appropriate. Analysis of the
existing agricultural safeguard, to which the special
agricultural safeguard is similar, indicates that it has
functioned not as an allowance for occasional response to
unusual situations but as an expansion of the limits Members
have accepted through tariff bindings. To be useful, the
special agricultural safeguard should do more than provide
formulas for import restrictions. It should provide for
objective and participatory processes that would bring
forward relevant information and guide an objective and
balanced accounting of the interests at play. |
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