From Bound Duties to Actual Protection: Industrial Liberalisation in the Doha Round

This study proposes a CGE assessment of multilateral liberalisation of non-agricultural market access. Scenarios considered include the so-called Girard proposal (with alternative choices for the involved coefficient), the removal of tariff peaks and complete liberalisation. This study is the first one to take duly into account the difference between bound and applied tariffs, while accounting for all enforced preferential trade arrangements and computing tariff cuts at the detailed product level (HS-6 classification). While non-agricultural market access liberalisation is found to be welfare-enhancing at the world level, cross-country distributive impacts prove significant. A soft liberalisation would not lower significantly applied duties in developing countries, due to their significant binding overhang. In contrast, a deep liberalisation would entail fierce price-competition between developing countries, largely specialised on similar sectors and on the same quality range.