1. Did globalization decline during that period?
2. To what extent did North America and China decouple their supply chains?
3. Did regionalization (“nearshoring”) increase?

In its broadest sense, the term “globalization” captures the interaction of national economies through the movement of people, ideas, capital, technology, goods, and services. Globalization so defined has already crossed a threshold from which it will likely never return, barring a global conflict or a failure to respond adequately to climate change. Indeed, individuals across the world today are more connected than ever before. Consider, for example, that almost two-thirds of the world’s population owns a smartphone, or that the estimated number of international tourists in 2023 exceeds 1 billion. Such human interconnectivity will only increase over time as communication and transportation-related technologies continue to advance. There has also been rapid growth in services trade, and especially in intermediate services.1 When observed through this broad lens, globalization remains deeply rooted and change is one of its enduring characteristics.

Among the many facets of globalization, our focus is on international trade, and on global value chains (GVCs) in particular. The volume of trade flows in goods and services has withstood significant challenges in the past, and stands to do the same in the future, even as patterns of trade flows change. Already, many of the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased geopolitical tensions have been met with creative workarounds, demonstrating the resilience of international trade and global supply networks. Changes in the patterns of cross-border trade in goods and services do not indicate a decline in globalization. Our quantitative analysis provides strong evidence that value-added trade supporting the production of goods and services did not recede during 2000-2021, nor was there evidence of a global trend toward reshoring. Instead, the evidence suggests that 2021 was a high mark for the global exchange of goods and services as measured by international value-added production linkages. Regarding the question of whether there has been a decoupling between North America and China, our analysis finds no evidence of decoupling of value-added production linkages. In fact, we find that China and North America increased their value-added production linkages between 2017 and 2021, implying significantly greater linkages than those that could be estimated using gross trade statistics.

Our analysis utilizes the GVC Indicators database created by the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing. The GVC Indicators database breaks down value added into that which flows through GVCs, and that which does not.2 See the appendix for a description of the data and methodology. In the charts that follow, the term “forward GVC participation” captures the degree to which a country’s domestic value added is exported through global value chains. “Backward GVC participation” captures the extent to which a country’s final production includes value added that is imported from global value chains. For each measurement, a higher percentage indicates greater relative importance of value added that is imported or exported through GVCs compared to value added sourced domestically. Thus, higher levels of backward and forward GVC participation indicate greater global integration of production networks.

We concentrate on the world’s three major trading entities: China, the European Union (EU), and North America, defined as the three nations in the USMCA (Canada, Mexico, and the United States). Our calculations for the EU in all years include GVC activity for the 27 member countries as of 2021, and therefore exclude the United Kingdom. Value added originating from China, the EU, and North America accounted for 54% of worldwide value added involved in GVCs in 2021, and final production by the three entities accounted for 57% of GVC-involved final production. Other significant GVC trading nations in 2021 which are not included in our main analysis include India, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom.3 In our analysis, we address reshoring within North America and the EU while considering how each bloc’s linkages with China have evolved over time.

To read the full paper, see below. 

Guy Erb is a former U.S. trade policy official and investment banker.
Scott Sommers is a PhD student in Economics at the University of Minnesota.

To read the full paper, please click here.

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THE NUMBERS: Average U.S. tariff rates,* 2022 –

Women’s underwear 15.5%

All underwear 14.7%

Men’s underwear 11.5%

Steel 5.7%

All goods 3.0%

* “Trade-weighted,” combining tariffs collected on all imports, including those under MFN tariff rates, Chinese products subject to “301” tariffs, and FTA/preference products exempted from tariffs.

WHAT THEY MEAN:

Worst Valentine’s Day surprise ever: The U.S. tariff system taxes women’s underwear more heavily than men’s. Facts follow:

1. Steel vs. Underwear: First, tariffs are fundamentally a form of taxation, and tariffs on underwear are high. A Google search this morning finds “about 144,000” uses of the phrase “steel tariffs” and “about three” (3) of the phrase “underwear tariffs.” But despite the domestic and international controversy over steel tariffs, clothing tariffs in general and underwear tariffs specifically are lots higher. In 2021, automakers, building contractors, and other metal buyers ferried 28 million tons of steel in from abroad for $44 billion, and paid the Customs Service $2.5 billion in tariffs. Thus the “average” tariff on steel came to about 5%. Buyers of clothing, meanwhile, bought 5.5 million tons of clothes for $109 billion and paid $16 billion on it, for an average of 14.5%. Underwear makes up about a tenth of clothing imports — 519,000 tons or 3.4 billion articles, at $10.1 billion last year — and brought in $1.54 billion in tariff revenue. The average underwear tariff, therefore, was 14.7%* or about three times the rate on steel.

2. Tariff Rates: Second, the U.S. tariff system taxes women’s underwear at higher rates than men’s. To dip briefly into Customs-and-trade-policy jargon, underwear tariffs are published in Chapter 61 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule** (“Knitted or Crocheted”), headings 6107 and 6108, and in Chapter 62 (“Other than Knitted or Crocheted”) headings 6207, 6208, and 6212. Together these five sections spread out over 17 pages and include 68 separate tariff “lines,” from line “61071100,” for men’s cotton underpants and briefs, to line “62129000,” a catchall for unclassifiable and possibly exotic things. The rates in these 68 lines range from 0.9% to 23.5%, diverging mainly along lines of class and gender. Among the products with clearly comparable female and male items, (a) aristocratic silks are lightly taxed, at 2.1% for women’s panties and 0.9% for male boxers and briefs; (b) the analogous working-class polyesters are heavily taxed, at 14.9% for men and 16.0% for women; and (c) middle-class cottons are, well, in the middle, at 7.6% for women and 7.4% for men. The highest rates fall on women’s products in heading 6212 with no obvious masculine counterpart: brassieres in a range from 4.8% (silk) to 16.9% (cotton or polyester), girdles 20%, and corsets 23.5%.

3. Costs: Third, tariffs on underwear, like consumer goods tariffs generally, are eventually paid by shoppers. Since Americans buy more women’s underwear than men’s, and since it is more heavily taxed, Customs raises more money from the women’s stuff. About three quarters of the $1.54 billion in underwear tariffs last year — $1.23 billion on $7.90 billion in imports, for an average rate of 15.5% — came from women’s underwear. Men’s brought in $306 million on $2.65 billion, for an 11.5% average. Peering a bit more closely, the $1.23 billion in lingerie tariffs came from 3.28 billion separate articles — i.e., about 37 cents per piece. The $306 million on men’s products came from 1.28 billion separate articles, or about 24 cents each. Markups, domestic transport costs, sales taxes, and so forth appear to have roughly tripled the prices of clothing*** from border to cash register last year, with tariffs amplified a bit at each stage. While precise figures would vary with the price of the item, on average the tariff system appears to add about $1.10 to the cost of each women’s underwear item, and 75 cents to men’s.

4. Comparisons: In international context, the U.S.’ underwear tariff rates as an overall average are pretty typical. But the U.S. system is (a) very unusual in taxing luxuries more lightly than mass-market goods, and (b) possibly unique in taxing women’s underwear more heavily than men’s. Most tariff systems have flat rates applying to all underwear: 5% in Australia, 10% in New Zealand, 18% in Canada, 20% in Colombia, also 20% in Jamaica, 25% (with an anti-poor twist, see below) in India, 30% in Thailand, an eyebrow-raising high 45% in South Africa, and so on. The Japanese and EU tariff systems in fact have a modest pro-female tilt, as they impose lower rates — zero in the Japanese case, 6.5% in the EU — on products in the 6212 heading, such as brassieres and corsets, as against flat rates of 9% and 12% for the rest.

As to the U.S., shifting from the jargon of customs and trade to that of policy analysis and evaluation: Seriously?! Boo! Do better!

Nonetheless, we still wish readers a happy and romantic Valentine’s Day.

* Up from 12.0% in 2017. This increase to some extent reflects the “301” tariffs on Chinese-stitched brassieres, briefs, etc. imposed in 2019, but other factors are at work as well. Both China and zero-tariff Central America have also lost market share, while MFN suppliers in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and India have gained relative to both.

** Some other clothing items show up in Chapters 42 and 48 — respectively leather and rubber products — but underwear of these types have no specific tariff line, so left out of the analysis above.

*** Clothing spending by consumers was about $400 billion last year; import value at the border $110 billion; 98% of clothing is imported.

FURTHER READING:

The U.S. International Trade Commission maintains the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule. Check Chapter 61, sections 6107 and 6108, and Chapter 62, sections 6207, 6208, and 6212 for underwear.

And the ITC’s Dataweb requires a bit of HTS expertise but appears unique in the world in allowing ordinary citizens to get not only tariff rates but very detailed information on U.S. exports, U.S. imports, and tariff collection, by product and country.

Background:

Is the anti-female tilt of underwear tariffs typical of the American tariff system, or a weird anomaly? Overall, the “class” bias, in which silks and cashmeres are taxed lightly while cottons are taxed heavily and polyester and acrylics most of all, is the norm for U.S. consumer goods tariffs. The “gender” bias, in which women’s underwear attracts higher tariffs than analogous men’s goods, seems less systematic though still the rule. Asked to study these questions in 2018, ITC economists concluded the following:

“… [T]ariffs act as a flat consumption tax. Since a flat consumption tax is a regressive tax on income, tariffs fall disproportionately on the poor. Across genders, we find large differences in tariff burden. Focusing on apparel products, which were responsible for about 75% of the total tariff burden on U.S. households, we find that the majority, 66%, of the tariff burden was from women’s apparel products. In 2015, the tariff burden for U.S. households on women’s apparel was $2.77 billion more than on men’s clothing. … . This gender gap has grown about 11% in real terms between 2006 and 2016. We find that two facts are responsible for this gender gap: women spend more on apparel than men and women’s apparel faces higher tariffs than men’s.”

ITC’s look at gender and class bias in the tariff system.

PPI’s Ed Gresser on U.S. consumer goods tariffs as taxation.

And Miranda Hatch in the BYU Law Review on the tariff system and gender bias.

Around the world:

The European Union tariff system has a 12% tariff on all briefs, panties, and boxers whether cotton, silk, or polyester, and whether designated “men’s and boy’s” or “women’s and girl’s,” and a lower 6.5% on brassieres and corsets.

Japan’s is 9% on comparable things and duty-free on brassieres and corsets.

Australia is at 5% all the way through.

India has an anti-poor tilt (many items get “25% or Rs25, whichever is higher,” in practice meaning >25% rates for anything costing less than $1.25 per item, so in practice cheap goods important to low-income families will be taxed more heavily than expensive luxuries), but no divergence in men’s and women’s rates.

Canada is 18% all the way through.

And Jamaica 20%.

And some trade-and-gender links:

WTO’s Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender.

… and a nine-expert panel (“Does Trade Liberalization Have Gender’s Back?”) from last December’s.

ABOUT ED

Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.

Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.

Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank Progressive Economy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.

Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.

To read the full article, please click here. 

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Overview

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the United States formed a coalition with 37 allies and partners that imposed sanctions and export controls to limit Russia’s access to foreign goods and technology and erode its ability to sustain the war. U.S. sanctions have immobilized Russian Central Bank assets and targeted thousands of individuals and entities. U.S. export controls were imposed to “choke off exports of technologies and other items that support Russia’s defense industrial base . . . and to degrade Russia’s military capabilities and ability to project power.” Export controls include bans or restrictions on products for military end use or to military end users, bans on exports of certain foreign-origin items like semiconductors produced with U.S. advanced technologies, tools, and software, and restrictions on exports of luxury goods to impose costs on Russian oligarchs. In addition, many multinational companies closed their Russian plants or stopped exports to Russia. 

The combination of these actions by the United States and its partners has isolated Russia from the global economy and degraded Russia’s military capabilities. However, despite an initial decline in overall Russian imports, Russia continues to have access to some dual-use technologies, such as semiconductors, through increased trade with countries like China. Looking specifically through the lens of trade statistics, this report examines the impacts of government measures and company actions on Russia’s ability to access foreign goods and technologies, including those that could support and sustain the Russian government’s war efforts.

The report examines: (1) overall trends in Russia’s imports to determine the extent to which Russia can import goods generally and (2) Russia’s imports of select goods (integrated circuits, smartphones, appliances, passenger vehicles, and vehicle parts) directly impacted by export controls or firm exits to assess in more depth the impact of these measures.

This report finds that the United States, its allies, and the private sector need to continue to stay ahead of Russia’s efforts to adapt to government measures and shift to new supply chain networks to access important goods and technologies, including by shifting import sources and importing goods directly or through transshipment points in some postSoviet states. This can be done through enhanced coordination, additional resources, and further strengthening enforcement efforts. 

Key findings: Overall import trends

Prewar imports and inventories were high: Russian imports substantially increased prior to the invasion of Ukraine. As a result, Russia entered the war with strong inventory levels for some products, such as certain consumer goods. There was also significant growth in integrated circuit (“IC”) imports in late 2021, though inventory data for ICs are not available. The strong inventory may have mitigated some of the initial impact of export controls.

Russian imports rebounded by the fall of 2022: Russian imports declined sharply in March and April 2022, and in April 2022 were 43 percent below the prewar median level (figure ES1). Russian imports then rebounded, exceeding median monthly prewar imports by September 2022. In the most recent three-month period, August to October 2022, combined imports were 1 percent lower than in the same period in 2019 and 11 percent lower than in the same period in 2021. 

Many countries have significantly curtailed exports to Russia: EU exports to Russia declined by $4.6 billion (52 percent) from October 2021 to October 2022, though the EU was the second largest supplier to Russia in October 2022 ($4.2 billion in exports). U.S. and UK exports each declined by $0.4 billion (85 and 89 percent, respectively) and Ukraine and Japan’s exports each declined by $0.3 billion (100 and 41 percent, respectively).

Russian imports from several countries significantly increased, led by China: A few countries increased exports well above prewar levels, including China, Belarus, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Uzbekistan. Exports from many other countries rebounded from their spring 2022 lows, and some post-Soviet states increased their transshipments of goods produced by multinational firms that no longer export the goods directly to Russia. 

To read the full report, please click here.

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A critical gateway between the Mississippi River and global oceans, New Orleans has been an entry and exit point for the United States since before the Louisiana Purchase. The city is now betting that position will continue — and even deepen — as the world enters a new era of global integration.

The New Orleans port is one of the nation’s busiest for agricultural exports like soybeans and corn. But it has struggled to compete for the lucrative imports that are ferried on huge ships from Asia, in part because those vessels cannot fit under a local bridge. As global supply chains rearrange in the pandemic’s wake, New Orleans’ proximity to Mexico and its position on the Mississippi River could help make it a crucial stop in what many expect to be a more resilient supply chain of the future.

Jeanna Smialek writes about the Federal Reserve and the economy for The New York Times. She previously covered economics at Bloomberg News, where she also wrote feature stories for Businessweek magazine.

Ana Swanson writes about trade and international economics for The New York Times. She previously covered the economy, trade and the Federal Reserve for The Washington Post.

This piece was originally posted on the New York Times. 

To read the full article, click here. 

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This paper by Research Fellow Stewart Paterson is the first in a series to examine the elements that drive the dynamics of trade dependency with the world’s second largest economy.

Organized into four parts, the essay begins with an examination of China’s economic rise in the past four decades and ascertains the degree of power the country has accrued through its economic success. Secondly, the paper briefly surveys this rise in a historic context, highlighting previous shifts in economic power that have impacted trade and its relationship with great power rivalry.

The third section looks at the reasons behind the existence of the current multilateral system and asks if those reasons remain valid. Finally, the conclusion poses: What are the chances of the current multilateral system surviving? How can the international community best prepare for its breakdown?

To read the full research from the Hinrich Foundation. please click here. 

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Critically, too, countries in the Global South are often the final destination for internationally traded low-value or illegal waste. Lack of capacity in these countries to properly manage and treat such waste brings greater environmental risks and social burdens.

If an explicit goal to reduce inequality is not built into the global circular economy transition, the gains to be made from circular trade are likely to be highly unevenly distributed between developed and least developed countries.

This paper sets out a framework for inclusive circular trade, intended to enable a pathway in which circular trade helps to promote fair, inclusive and circular societies. The framework was developed through the work of an alliance of organizations spanning Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Europe.

To read the full report from the Chatham House, please click here.

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Generally, periods of high food prices are considered a boon for producers, especially in countries that supply the international market, raising the profitability of farmers. However, such periods tend to be short-lived when price incentives instigate a supply response, facilitated by continuous cropping seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres that bring food markets swiftly back into equilibrium. This has often been the case in the last two decades, but today, different forces are seemingly conspiring to protract the current crisis, casting doubt on whether supply responses can be both quick and sufficient.

Agricultural sectors are highly energy-intensive and largely depend on fossil fuels. Much of today’s turmoil dates to 2021, when energy prices began to surge, adding to producer costs. But higher energy prices have far more deleterious effects, raising the cost of key nitrogen fertilizers, which are primarily manufactured from natural gas and are by far the most important agricultural nutrient in raising crop yields. Prices of nitrogen, N, in the form of urea or ammonium nitrate, reached record highs by the end of 2021. This price momentum carried into 2022, and the international prices of other important mineral fertilizers, such as phosphate, P, and potash, K, have joined suit, reaching record peaks in April 2022. As the world’s largest fertilizer exporter, the Russian Federation began tightening supplies to international markets soon after its invasion of Ukraine through the introduction of export restrictions that will be extended through to the 2023/24 season.

The upshot is that with no let-up in the current war, the margins of global food producers (crops and livestock) are being squeezed, now and seemingly into the foreseeable future, by higher input costs. Not only energy and fertilizers for crops and pastures, but seeds, feeds and pesticides are becoming more costly than ever, to the extent that farmers may reduce input applications or switch to crops that are less input-intensive. This, by way of lowering productivity, is likely to suppress exports of key foodstuffs (particularly wheat, rice and maize) to the international market, and to put at risk countries that are heavily dependent on imports to meet their staple food needs.

This Special Feature examines the implications of higher input prices on countries that are forced to import them in large quantities owing to a lack of productive endowments. Nor are major exporting countries immune from higher input costs, which could limit their capacity to supply international markets. That being said, the overall objective of the feature is to assess the prospects of whether a global supply response is possible, and whether it will be sufficient and swift enough to restore equilibrium to food markets. The analysis is facilitated by the Global Input Price Index (GIPI) – a summary metric introduced in the November 2021 edition of the Food Outlook report – and the new compilation of agricultural input import bills.

To read the full report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. please click here.

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The U.S.-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) held its second ministerial meeting in Saclay – Paris, France on May 15-16, 2022. U.S. co-chairs, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, and United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai were joined by EU Co-Chairs European Commission Executive Vice Presidents Margrethe Vestager and Valdis Dombrovskis to review progress, meet with a range of U.S. and EU stakeholders, and advance Transatlantic cooperation and democratic approaches to trade, technology, and security that deliver for people on both sides of the Atlantic.

Thanks to the close and enduring ties between the United States and the European Union, we have resolved long-standing bilateral issues, including disagreements on tariffs, and leveraged the strength of our partnership to counter non-market, trade distortive practices, and respond swiftly to Putin’s war with unprecedented sanctions and export control measures. Building on these successes, the United States and European Union, home to 780 million people who share democratic values and the largest economic relationship in the world, will advance the TTC agenda on a number of critical economic and technology policies and initiatives designed to strengthen our bilateral economies, meet current geopolitical challenges and update the rules of the global economy.

TTC working groups are deepening U.S.-EU cooperation by expanding access to digital tools for small- and medium-sized enterprises and securing critical supply chains such as semiconductors. They are collaborating closely on emerging technology standards, climate and clean tech objectives data governance and technology platforms, information and communications technology services’ (ICTS) security and competitiveness, and the misuse of technology threatening security and human rights. The TTC working groups are also coordinating on export controls, investment screening and security risks, and a range of global trade challenges, including countering the harmful impact of non-market, trade-distortive policies and practices on technological development and competitiveness in sectors of shared priority. To ensure that the government dialogues are informed by the broad perspectives of the U.S. and EU communities inform their work, the TTC working groups are continuing robust engagement with a diverse range of stakeholders, including those in industry, labor organizations, think tanks, non-profit organizations, environmental constituencies, academics, and other civil society members.

During their ministerial meeting, the U.S. and EU TTC co-chairs reviewed the outcomes generated by the joint working groups and announced key outcomes.

To read the full report from the White House, please click here.

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The multilateral trading system has three pillars: negotiation, dispute settlement, and administration. Of these, negotiation is the one of greatest importance. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the only place where fully multilateral—that is, global—trade negotiations can take place. It has representatives present from 164 Members, accounting for more than 98 percent of world trade. Most of the remaining countries that are not Members, some two dozen, are in the process of accession and almost all of them are observers.

The WTO has unrivalled infrastructure to facilitate negotiations—a skilled Secretariat made up of experienced experts thoroughly versed in the existing rules of the trading system, teams of interpreters and translators on call, numerous meeting rooms with audiovisual equipment for simultaneous interpretation into three languages (and more on special occasions), and connections via the web for remote participation. It is the meeting place for a large number of working committees, a repository of their past proceedings, and beyond this, it holds the records of over 600 cases litigated among its Members. In terms of physical facilities and support staff, everything is ready for negotiations.

Almost all Members have resident missions located within a few minutes’ drive from the WTO headquarters in Geneva. The missions have a core of staff attending committee meetings. The heads of delegation—the permanent representatives to the WTO who are ambassadors sitting as the General Council of the organization—have been delegated the full plenary powers of the Ministerial Conference. They are empowered, in the view of their counterparts, to commit their countries to trade agreements. Ever since the International Court of Justice issued its Eastern Greenland Decision, ministers (particularly foreign ministers) have been able to bind their governments even with a verbal declaration, enough so that they can definitively transfer sovereignty to another nation of substantial tracts of their nation’s territory. All the physical and legal elements are present for trade negotiations to take place.

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To read the full report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, please click here.

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It is a fact universally acknowledged by all students of political science that a proper representative form of governance must consist of three branches of activity—legislative (rulemaking in the case of the WTO), judicial (dispute settlement), and administrative or executive. Not every situation in international commercial relations requires a new rule, nor is it the subject of a dispute. There is, often, however, a steady demand for an administrative element that supports daily the smooth functioning of the world trading system. Here, there is an institutional deficiency that any serious consideration of reform should address. The role of the Secretariat, the staff of the WTO, differs substantially in many respects from those of its sister international economic institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF or Fund). There are also features that distinguish the WTO from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The differences have had consequences.

To read the full report from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, please click here.

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