關于歐盟對外貿易政策的一個留學生paper

歐盟對外貿易政策 

 

本文的重點是歐洲聯盟（EU）的自由貿易方向的對外貿易政策在內部和外部刺激下的運作。這項工作的主要論點是，根據世界貿易組織的多邊貿易體系運作，歐盟的積極正面的作用是由兩個因素組成的：第一，貿易政策制定的內部制度設計：合理的選擇，導致歷史的制度設計成為自由貿易路徑的“鎖插件”，二是比較生產的優勢和聯盟的目標，以及它成為全球超級大國的因素和理由。使用的主要理論是歐洲一體化的理論理性選擇和歷史制度主義和貿易理論的比較優勢，同時還有Hecksher - 俄林模型。因此，本文分為三個部分。第一部分''理論框架'解釋的討論表明理論的使用;第二部分“'歐盟對外貿易政策的內部催化劑''（ETP）首先給出了歐盟ETP的全貌，然后轉移到描述貿易政策決策。

External Trade Policy Of The European Union Economics Essay

 

This paper focuses on the internal and external stimuli rotating the European Union (EU) external trade policy in the free trade direction. The main argument of the work is that the EU’s active positive role in multilateral trading system functioning under the World Trade Organization has been driven by two factors: first, internal institutional design of the trade policy-making: rationally chosen historical institutional design that leads to ‘’lock-ins’’ in free trade path, and second, rationales of comparative advantage in factors of production and the Union’s target of becoming global superpower. The main theories used are European integration theories rational-choice and historical institutionalism, and trade theory comparative advantage accompanied with the Hecksher-Ohlin model. Therefore, the paper is divided into three parts. Part I ‘’Theoretical Framework’’ explains the usage of the indicated theories in the discussion; Part II ‘’Internal Catalysts of EU External Trade Policy’’ (ETP) firstly gives an overall picture of the EU ETP, and then shifts to describe trade policy making: how or whether the free trade or protectionist interests of Member States, EU institutions and private actors’ are balanced, and the role of institutional contexts in this regard; Part III ‘’EU’s Active Engagement in Global Trade Liberalization: Rationales’’ aims at answering the question of lying in the subject of this section: why this active stance ? To this end, I firstly give a picture of the EU international trade with certain indicators, secondly match this empirical knowledge with the Hecksher-Ohlin model’s assumptions to determine the economic objective, and thirdly, employ ‘’power in trade’’ and ‘’power through trade’’ conceptions to reveal the political objective under the established economic assumption, and finally, by shifting to the EU politics in Doha Development Agenda (DDA) I confirm the assumption of the EU’s scramble for becoming a global power in its own right.

 

PART I : Theoretical Framework

 

Before turning to discuss the EU external trade policy and political its active engagement in the global trade liberalization, it is vital to indicate the theoretical underpinnings of these realities. The overall point of departure of the paper is to analyze the political nature of economic processes (Kr?tke & Underhill 2006:25) with a view to the fact that there is a systematic and reciprocal relationship between the political and economic domains (ibid.25-26) of a state, which can’t be separated. In this spirit, for the case of the EU, I argue from a liberal point of view: EU global economic policies have been driven more by economic than security interests (Simon 2005:404). Because the rationale behind the Treaty of Paris (1951) was that the economic efficiency of the integration of European states would eliminate further wars among them, and in the same vein, the establishment of the Customs Union and adoption of the Single Market Program for the attainment of the completed internal market of free movement of goods, labour, capital and services, would enable better exploitation of economies of scale by and tougher competition among the member states, and these would improve the competitiveness of European producers in relation to others (Kokko et al.2005:12).

 

In the next section I employ the European integration theories: rational-choice and historical institutionalism to explain the choice and path-dependence of the Member States (MS) in free trade: the rational choice of delegating trade policy-making to the EU level obstruct an easy reversal of the initial and relative gains of this path increase over time (Pierson 2000:252), to demonstrate the EU MS dependence in the free trade path. Such an approach converges with the Ricardo’s comparative advantage theory, and Heckschler-Ohlin model to elucidate the EU’s active role in the global trade liberalization under WTO then. Basing on these theories, I argue that the institutional design of EU trade policy-making, and European transnational business responses to the pressures of globalization (Apeldoorn in Stubbs & Underhill 2006:308) reflect that MS choose the supranational representation of their individual international trade interests: if they are faced with a choice between free trade and protecting a security interest, and if a large proportion of the electorate (business groups supporting the states) is employed in globally competitive industries, the MS will choose free trade (Simon 2005:401).

 

When it comes to the third section, the theory comparative advantage and Heckschler - Ohlin model as its element explain the rationale of the EU to promote free trade globally: a country gains by exporting the good in which it has a comparative advantage and by importing the good in whicih it has a comparative disadvantage (Coughlin et al. in Frieden & Lake 2000:304), and the advantageous exchange and specialization in these goods increase national wealth. Therefore, differences in factors of production such as land, labor and capital (Ricardo in Crane&Amawi 1997:72) lead to differences in prices of goods; improving this simple approach, Heckscher-Ohlin model focuses on the issues of proportionality of factors of production for goods: a labour-rich country exports labour-intensive goods and a capital-rich country exports capital-intensive goods (Hart & Prakash in Frieden & Lake 2000:184). Therefore, comparative advantage in this situation can be driven from exporting the goods of abundant production factor. The objective in pursuing this way, is the matter of ‘’constant returns to scale’’ (Gilpin 2001:206), which says that by pursuing the H-O model, the state will earn substantial gains the more it exports and consequently be interested in enlarging the scale of the production of these goods the more it earns. Furthermore, the Stolper-Samuelson model’s argument is worth to mention that the change in price of a product would increase the return to the abundant factor, and thus the real incomes of owners of this factor will rise: an increase in the price of the labor-intensive good leads to an increase in the real wage rate of labor throughout the economy and an increase in the real incomes of laborers (Alt & Gilligan in Frieden & Lake 2000:330), and this partly explains the pressures of the EU transnational business interests pressures for trade liberalization.

PART II : Internal Catalysts of EU External Trade Policy

 

The main reason for depicting the trade policy decision making in this section is that without an internal analysis of this process it would be hard to describe the EU’s stance in international trade. Therefore, I firstly examine the institutional contexts of the process, and then advance towards the main argument within the confines of the rational-choice institutionalism with an element of the historical institutionalism. Such an analysis will conduce towards the argument that the institutional settlement of the EU MS diverging domestic trade interests is one of the reasons of the EU’s observed active stance in the global trade liberalization besides the factors of global pressures. It should be noted that I use the pre-Lisbon legal framework, when I quote certain articles.

 

What is the root for an EU common external trade policy? According to Peterson & Bomberg, (1999, pp.91), the EU as a customs union must be a single entity in global trade or the internal market cannot function; hence the EUETP is built on two girders: Common External Tariff, a common tax applied to all foreign products entering the EU market, and Common Commercial Policy (CCP), which obliges the MS to negotiate and sign deals with non-EU states. Attainment of all the MS agreements on specific trade policy matters must be challenging and it directly relates to how the legal framework lets the EU institutions tackle with the diverging trade policy preferences of the MS and towards what it leads to in the global scene. I argue that the EU MS governments in the Council rationally choose to represent their trade policy interests internationally via the Commission.

Thus Article 133 of TEU (currently TFEU Article 207) makes trade policymaking and decision taking under the exclusive EU competence: “the Commission shall submit proposals to the Council for implementing the common commercial policy…and where agreements with one or more States or international organizations need to be negotiated, the Commission shall make recommendations to the Council, which shall authorize the Commission to open the necessary negotiations’’ and ‘’the Commission shall conduct these negotiations in consultation with a special committee appointed by the Council…’’. Quite obviously, it gives both the Commission and Council the power. On one side, the Commission proposes certain trade policies as a proposal considering also the interests of interest groups,

NGOs (Woolcock 2000:380), and other big European multinational corporations. Take the example of the establishment of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) in 1983, which was realized with the pressure of the European big business elite: this is an elite forum from within which the leaders of this big businesses work out a common and cohesive strategy that is then propagated through the European institutions, in particular the European Commission (Apeldoorn in Stubbs & Underhill 2006:308). At the same time, this factor also urges the governments in the Council to take into account the pressures of their country-specific MNCs’ interests and this paves the way for majoritarian free trade inclinations in the Council. But this may not be a full picture. Apparently, there is an institutional clash over the settlement of important trade interests: the rationale of the Commission is often that highly protectionist national policies are avoided and the Union’s unity is maintained (Peterson & Bomberg 1996:96), particularly in accordance with the uniform principles of the CCP. On the other side, it requires immense debates on the trade policy (negotiating position) recommendations of the Commission to the Council before the Commission is authorized by the Council on QMV: free trader and trade protectionist MS clash over the negotiation points.

Heavy discussions within both the Council and Committee of Article 133 take place before such an authorization. Conducting negotiations and hence rotating the trade interests of the whole 27 MS become quite challenging because everytime a trade policy decision is taken the divisions between the Adam Smith-inspired British and Colbertiste French emerge. The Committee of Article 133 helps the MS and Commission interactions to adjust diverse negotiation points. Following this process, comes the adoption by the Council, of the negotiated international trade agreement. Acting in accordance with the Treaty rule, the Council takes decisions on negotiated international trade agreements by QMV in the areas under the EU’s exclusive competence. But here lies a dichotomy, in the parlance of Peterson: on one hand, ‘’few major agreements are concluded without consensus on the Council’’ and on the other, QMV in its turn encourages concessions and compromises over these agreements (Peterson & Bomberg 1999:91).

So this is the way how the MS reach common negotiating positions in the conclusion of international trade agreements. But added to this is the matter of politicization: if particular trade issues are politicized, then the QMV takes the lead. For example, liberalization of agriculture originates two divisions within the EU: first, protectionist southern MS headed by France especially because the French farms ‘’export agriculture products which far outnumber any other EU country, and it is the only European country to be fully self dependent with regard to food production’’ (Economy Watch web-site, France Agriculture), and to this protectionist club joins Austria, Belgium, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Spain; on the other hand, free trader bloc of Germany, UK, Netherlands, and Scandinavian countries. Another side of the coin is that the pre-Lisbon Treaty has been fruitful for the victory of the free trade path, in the sense that the EU has been ‘’effective when technocrats were in control’’ (Woolcock & Hodge in Wallace & Wallace 1996:303). Hanson (1998, p.81) particularly argues that the EU trade policy liberalization is largely the result of changes in the institutional context of trade policy-making. It means that by delegating the trade policy making to the EU level and trade policy negotiations to the Commission, the MS have consciously chosen to constrain the range of possible policy options available to them and effectively locked-in a liberal trade policy (Nicolaidis quoted in Simon 2005:403). In other words, when the ‘’MS security interests diverge, external trade policy preferences also diverge’’ and thus MS have allowed supranational institutions and common policies in the field of external trade policies.

I argue that this ‘’rationally chosen historical lock-in’’ in the free trade path mainly started in the 1990s, with the transformation of wider international framework with the GATT and later on WTO enhancing liberalization worldwide, and after trade policy became a ‘’high politics’’ (Peterson&Bomberg 1999:97) for being competitive in international arena. The first remarkable empirical case in this regard was the Uruguay Round of the GATT: the ‘’Blair House’’ (ibid.) events of 1993 started with the Commission’s wishes to actualize the role of the EU as a major trading power. This Round’s most successful outcome was the decision on the liberalization of the Multi Fiber Arrangement - a regime that was an impediment for to import their textile and clothing products from developing countries – as of 1995, and this process ended on 2006, quite recently. According to Peterson (1999, p.113) the rationale behind for gradually starting the dismantle of all controls on textiles trade was that the EU as the world’s largest textiles and clothing importer ceased protecting the European producers from competition just in the 30 % labor intensive industry. Moreover, General Affairs Council adopted the Council Proposal on ‘’Everything But Arms’’ in February 2001 (Jürgen et al.2008:270) granting duty-free access to imports of all products from 49 LDCs, except arms and ammunitions, without any quantitative restrictions, as an amendment to the EU’s ‘’Generalized System of Preferences’’ (GSP) trade arrangement through which the EU provides preferential access to the EU market to 176 developing countries and territories (European Commission, GSP web-site).
 

These cases indicate that the EU MS, have ‘’calculated the utility’’ (Schimmelfennig in Wiener&Diez 2004:77) of the indicated trade policy actions and chosen them to maximize their utilities, empowering the Commission. Applying Pollack, I argue that the increasing returns of the external trade policy liberalization have generated incentives both for the EU Commission and the MS to get ‘’locked-in’’ the existing path (Pollack in Wiener&Diez 2004:140).

 

In the next section, in order to analyze these ‘’constant returns to scale’’, I use the comparative advantage theories of Ricardo and Hecksher-Ohlin in explaining the reason behind the EU’s active engagement in the global trade liberalization under WTO, particularly the Doha Development Agenda (DDA).

 

PART III :: EU’s Active Engagement in Global Trade liberalization: Rationales

 

The aim of this section is to illustrate how and why the EU as an economic giant quite actively plays a leading role in the global trade liberalization under WTO. To do this, I firstly draw the overall picture of the EU’s international trade, match the empirical data with the EU’s Hecksher-Ohlin path, and indicate the political objective of the engagement. Following these analyses I touch upon the EU’s role in current DDA negotiations and show how such a role serves for the mentioned objective. All these discussions conduce toward the argument that the EU is realistically liberal: EU uses its power in international trade as a tool to gradually become a global power in its own right, in other words, it exercises ‘’power in & through trade’’ (Meuiner & Nicolaidis 2006:906).

 

The EU is the largest importer (World Trade Report 2009) and largest exporter (The World Factbook, CIA) of goods and services, accounting for 20% of global imports and exports (Europa: Gateway to the EU: External Trade), and also the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP according to the IMF (World Economic Outlook Database). Having concentrated on the manufacturing sector (machinery, chemicals, other manufacturing goods), it is the net importer of raw materials, and net exporter of finished goods, at the same time with the share of trade in services such as financial services, tourism, and transport constituting almost one third of its commodities trade (Simon 2005:379-80). Apparently, the Union is a power through trade and therefore has the largest pie from the dynamic global trade liberalization.

From the GATT’s Kennedy Round (1964-67), through Tokyo (1973-79), Uruguay (1986-94) to Doha (as of 2001) Rounds, the Union has gained been active and huge experience in international trade negotiations. As a result of these rounds, the EU’s average tariff on industrial imports has now fallen to 4%, one of the lowest in the world, and added to this is the EU’s strategic association with the WTO’s rules-based system which provides a degree of legal certainty and transparency in the conduct of international trade, because the WTO sets rules whereby its members can defend themselves against unfair practices like dumping by which exporters compete against local rivals (Europa website: External Trade). At the same time, the EU has established its well-known GSP system and EBA and these function simultaneously with its bilateral preferential trade agreements with many countries and regions like EEA, Central and Eastern European states, Stabilization and Association Agreements etc. with especially the inter-regional association agreements with ASEAN that first approach the EC in 1971 (Robles in Jürgen et al.2008:98), MERCOSUR, SADC, and ‘’imagined inter-regionalism’’ (Holland in Jürgen et al.2008:254) with Africa, Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP). Since my focus in the paper is on the EU’s global trade strategy, it is worth to indicate the goals of the EU in playing a leading role in trade facilitations. In trade such goals are related with what a country is specialized in, according to the comparative advantages theory.

As Pigott & Cook (1993, p.44) say, ’’ a country should specialize in and export the goods which intensively use the factor of production that it has in abundance’’. In other words, ‘’having a relative comparative advantage in a given sector means that the country concerned has a better export over import ratio in this sector than for the rest of its economic sectors’’ (Global Europe 2008, Europe in Global Economy: European Specialization, p.6). And the EU is specialized in the manufacturing sector because it has the abundant factor of capital and high-skilled labor. I would argue that discussing empirical indictors of this situation is very important. Empirical data from the DG Trade’s ‘’Global Europe: EU performance in global economy’’: for example, with export levels in the non-electrical machinery, motor vehicles, plastic products, pharmaceutical products, paper and paper articles sectors all being about twice as high as import levels (p.9): with 18.5% of the world market for high-tech products, the EU has become the principal exporter ahead of the US and Japan (p.16). Not only in the sphere of industrial goods but also services: only in 2007 the value of services exported outside the EU was equivalent to approximately 40% of the value of goods exports (p.21). Added to this is the fact that the EU is the world’s biggest investor: EU stocks of outward investments amount to $2,200bn (33% of world stocks), against $1,400bn for the US (22%). Under these conditions, multilateral trade liberalization gives huge benefits to the EU and thus it there is a case of what Hecksher-Ohlin argues: ‘’constant returns to scale’’ as mentioned in the end of the PART I. As the Commission Communication indicates, open markets are a must for the competitiveness of the EU and its businesses (COM 2006, No 566).
 

But what is the EU’s global political target behind this economic indicators scene? I would draw on the Meunier & Nicolaidis (2006) conceptions of ‘’power in trade’’ and ‘’power through trade’’, and then bringing the element of respectively ‘’market access’’ and ‘’services’’ in Doha Development Agenda (DDA), and then confirm these scholars’ formulations. The basic argument is that EU’s internal market size, and also the share in world trade are its key sources of global trade power, which are deliberately used by the EU to secure asymmetrical market access concessions from others (p.908). They say, the use of trade to achieve non-trade objectives has pride of place as a potential instrument of Europe’s geopolitical power (p.912) because the EU as a heavily relies on non-military means, which is essentially trade. The Union implements it in two forms: (1) power in trade, whereby access to the EU’s market is simply traded for increased exports of the EU’s own goods, capital and services (p.910) asymmetrically for the benefit of the EU; and (2) power through trade, whereby it exports its internal mode of governance to its external relations. Now, I substantiate these formulations as follows.

 

The DDA issues: (a) market access for agricultural and non-agricultural products;

 

(b) elimination of subsidies; and (c) services. For (a) the DDA sets the elimination of tariffs for agricultural products for all WTO members. The EU, despite its asymmetrically preferential access to most of the member countries agriculture product markets, responds to this requirement as the first formulation assumes – rather than a package tariff reduction, the EU requires incremental and product-selective reductions. On the other hand, for market access to industrial goods the EU almost does not demonstrate hard stance: it admits the protectionist measures to be applied by other WTO members meanwhile herself, together with the other developed member countries has advantageous accesses to big developing WTO member state markets. The EU’s import and export indicators in the global industrial products trade are indicated above in detail – EU is the largest possessor. As for agricultural export subsidies, the EU agrees on petty offers such as the reduction of subsidies on some selective products that each LDC would wish but keenly closes doors for further liberalizations unless these LDCs and other developing countries give her a larger market access. For the second formulation above, the services issue is remarkable. The Union absolutely does not oppose further liberalization of services under WTO because it is the largest exporter of services (this element also pertains to the logic of first formulation) and it has already liberalized internally to a large degree the services like financial and telecommunications: ‘’exporting its single market rules to other contexts’’ (p.914). This case shows that current DDA policy of the EU significantly serves for its target to become a global power through the back door, by leveraging its (substantial) trade power (p. 922). Therefore, I conclude that the underlying reason for the EU’s active engagement in the global trade liberalization is not merely as the web-site of ‘’Europa: Gateway to the European Union: External Trade’’ announces as such: ‘’to help developing countries, the EU is ready to open its market to their exports even if they cannot reciprocate’’ but instead is, to reap the benefit of its asymmetrical global trade might and ‘’become a superpower on the European continent that stands equal to the US’’ (Kupchan quotes Prodi in Jürgen et al. 2008:135).

 

Conclusion

 

The paper’s main points can be summarized as follows:

 

Rational historical choice of delegating trade policy-making to the EU level obstruct an easy reversal of the initial and relative gains of this path increase over time (Pierson 2000:252), and thus by delegating the trade policy making to the EU level and trade policy negotiations to the Commission, the MS have consciously chosen to constrain the range of possible policy options available to them and effectively locked-in a liberal trade policy. Because EU MS have ‘’calculated the utility’’ (Schimmelfennig in Wiener&Diez 2004:77) of the indicated trade policy actions and chosen them to maximize their utilities, empowering the Commission. Hence the internal market freedoms and institutional design are the roots for the EU’s global free trade choice

 

The Union specialized in the manufacturing sector with abundant factors of production: capital and high-skilled labor; being the largest importer and exporter of goods and services, multilateral trade liberalization gives huge benefits to the EU and thus it there is a case of what Hecksher-Ohlin argues: ‘’constant returns to scale’’ are highest. Internal market size & the share in world trade are EU’s key sources of global trade power, which are deliberately used by the EU to secure asymmetrical market access concessions from others

 

Supported by these internal and external means of might, the EU active engagement in global trade targets becoming a global superpower over time through power in & through trade.