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4 Trade Remedies and AdjustmentWith the exception of TAA, most of the policies discussed above offer some degree of protection of the domestic industry from competing imports. Even when acknowledging costs associated with protection, i.e., higher prices to consumers and downstream industries, proponents of trade remedies usually justify their use in terms of favorable effects on domestic output, employment, earnings, and income distribution. There is often the hope that increased profitability may encourage firms in a protected industry to make investments required to adopt new technologies. Yet the effects on firms and workers in protected industries are complex, and policies are often ineffective in attaining their stated goals.
Baldwin (1982, 1985) catalogs a number of now-familiar reasons why protection of an industry may cause a smaller reduction in imports and a smaller associated increase in domestic output than anticipated. Country-specific trade remedies such as antidumping measures or countervailing duties encourage diversion of trade to as-yet unrestricted alternative import sources, a response documented for products ranging from textiles and apparel to automobiles.19 Trade may also be diverted to related products or product forms not covered by the restriction.
Consumers faced with higher prices may shift their demand to now-cheaper substitutes.
Downstream users may also shift production off-shore to avoid higher domestic prices, as in the case of laptop producers affected by US antidumping duties on flat-panel displays (Irwin 2002, 80). Industrial users of highly protected sugar shifted to alternative sweeteners; under NAFTA some candy manufacturers shifted production to Canada and Mexico. When protected by a quantitative restriction on imports, a domestic supplier with market power may find it profitable to produce less rather than more output and thus may reduce rather than increase employment. When faced with quantitative trade restrictions or specific tariffs in the US market, foreign suppliers often find it profitable to upgrade the quality of their exports, a response documented in Korean footwear as well as Japanese autos.
Even more important in the longer term are induced changes in the structure of the
domestic industry. One such response is foreign direct investment (FDI). Although
Volkswagen’s ultimately unsuccessful US investment preceded Japan’s voluntary export
restraint, the VER played a key role in accelerating FDI in the US by Japanese firms. Contrary to the widespread belief that Japanese success relied on country-specific conditions that could not be replicated in US factories, Japanese “transplants” claimed an increasing share of the domestic market; other foreign companies followed suit. Struggling to compete, US producers have gradually introduced some of the managerial and technological approaches believed to account for Japanese success.
While foreign-controlled US plants certainly augmented domestic production and employment compared to a situation in which the same autos were imported, it has also brought about significant changes within the industry that are not apparent from aggregate performance measures. The most fundamental change is a continuing decline in the market share of the traditional “big three” – i.e., protection has helped the domestic industry much more than it has helped the United Auto Workers and the firms that asked for protection.20 In its last fiscal year, Toyota’s earnings were more than the three US companies combined (New York Times, 20 May 2004). Moreover, the newer plants are mostly far from Detroit, and their workers are not unionized. And, typical of most US manufacturing, output per workers has been rising for all firms, i.e., employment has been falling relative to output.
Even when FDI is not an important factor, trade remedies may induce substantial changes within the domestic industry. The extent of induced change within a declining but protected sector is well illustrated by the case of textiles and apparel. Textile imports from Japan had already begun to threaten the US industry before World War II. A 1956 VER on Japanese exports of cotton textiles to the US paved the way for entry by other exporter and fibers. Efforts to control trade diversion eventually produced the Multifiber Agreement, “the single most important barrier to developing country exports of manufactures” (Pearson 2004, 61), though scheduled for termination by 2005. Yet despite escalating protection at rising cost to domestic consumers,21 imports continued their inexorable rise. Between 1972 and 1997, the real value of textile imports nearly tripled, while apparel imports soared by a factor of ten (Levinsohn and
Petropoulos 2001, Table 1).
Not surprisingly, the number of US plants and industry employment fell over the same period. But even within the context of overall decline, new plants opened at nearly the same rate that established plants closed. From 1987 to 1992, the average gross rate of exit of plants in textiles was 31 %, while the average gross rate of plant entry was 28%; the corresponding numbers over the same period for apparel were 46% and 49% (Levinsohn and Petropoulos 2001, Table 3). These large rates reflect relocation within the United States, as textile producers have all but abandoned high-cost locations in New England in favor of southern states. Apparel manufacturing has shifted from its traditional eastern base in New England and New York to the south and California, as immigrants from Europe, once the mainstay of the labor force in the apparel industry, have been replaced by immigrants from Asia and Latin America.
Levinsohn and Petropoulos conclude that “in a probabilistic sense, inefficient firms die,” i.e., after controlling for size of plant, wages paid, capital stock per worker, and measures of outsourcing, firms with lower productivity are more likely to exit. “Those who worry that the crazy-quilt of protection afforded by the MFA allows inefficient plants to prosper while protecting them from the realities of the world marketplace should find some solace in this result.” Yet substantial continuing investment and new hires in these secularly shrinking industries raises other concerns.
The “creative destruction” in the highly protected domestic textile and apparel industries illustrates the pernicious effect of protection for highly competitive industries that are losing comparative advantage. As expected, protection raises domestic prices and profitability.
However, higher profitability can promote new investment in an industry with a shrinking
domestic market, thus forcing out current plants and workers (the latter due both to plant closings and to adoption of new capital-intensive and skill-intensive technologies that raise output per worker). The creative-destruction process is the domestic counterpart of trade diversion, with demand diverted from the most efficient foreign producers to the least inefficient domestic producers. Rather than easing the adjustment burden of existing plants and workers, protection in these industries may actually add to the distress of adjustment while retarding its progress.
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