Mapping of Safeguard Provisions in Regional Trade Agreements

In the case of bilateral (or intra-RTA safeguards), the study analyses provisions governing injury assessment, causation, conditions for the invocation of a measure and the types of measures that may be employed. We use the yardstick of GATT Article XIX and the WTO Safeguards Agreement to determine whether the provisions applicable to bilateral safeguard measures are more or less stringent than the corresponding multilateral rules. The study also includes an inventory of infant industry, balance of payments, and special safeguards applicable to agricultural products found in RTAs.

We demonstrate through various examples that safeguard provisions have become more prescriptive in recent years, though little homogeneity in their design is found even for a given country. In the case of global safeguards, roughly a quarter of RTAs provide for the possible exclusion of the RTA partner, subject to certain criteria, thus discriminating against non-parties. In the case of bilateral safeguards, some RTAs use looser language to define the trigger mechanism to invoke a safeguard and to determine injury standards, thus potentially offering greater scope to use such measures. We found wide variety in the types of bilateral safeguard measures that are permitted in RTAs. A number of more recent RTAs tighten the conditions for application of a bilateral safeguard through limiting the duration of the safeguard measure, allowing the use of tariff-based measures only, and binding the use of the measure to the transition period. Other RTAs specify neither the length of the bilateral safeguard measure nor the conditions for its reapplication, thus providing greater scope to impose such measures than in the multilateral context.

 

No: ERSD-2013-10

Authors: Jo-Ann Crawford, Jo McKeagg, and Julia Tolstova

Manuscript date: October 2013

Key Words:

Regional Trade Agreements, safeguards

JEL classification numbers:

F13, F15, F53

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