ABOUT GLOBAL TRADE ALERT

The Global Trade Alert (GTA) was launched in June 2009 when it was feared that the global financial crisis would lead governments to adopt widespread 1930s-style beggar-thy-neighbour policies.

After a decade of growth coordinated and housed in the University of St.Gallen, the GTA transferred into a newly established charitable foundation. Thanks to the generous support of the University of St.Gallen, the Max Schmidheiny Foundation and Prof. Simon Evenett, the St.Gallen Endowment for Prosperity through Trade (SGEPT) launched in late 2020. The foundation is the new institutional home of the GTA since 1 January 2021.

Although global in scope, the GTA has given particular attention to the policy choices of the G-20 governments ever since their leaders made a “no protectionism” pledge in Washington DC in November 2008.

Although initially conceived as a trade policy monitoring initiative, as thousands of policy announcements have been documented, the GTA has become a widely-used input for analysis and decision-making by firms, industry associations, journalists, researchers, international organisations, and governments.

This reflects the fact that, as the International Monetary Fund noted in 2016, the GTA “has the most comprehensive coverage of all types of trade-discriminatory and trade liberalizing measures.”

For further information about the data collection methods of the Global Trade Alert see section 3 of this paper and pages 17-19 of this report. In recent years each GTA report has contained a chapter “What’s new in the Global Trade Alert database?” where updates on data collection methods, presentation of results, and sources are provided.

 
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REPORTS

ZEITGEIST SERIES BRIEFING #54

Are Chinese exports causing a protectionist backlash? Is it time to switch sourcing to ASEAN?

Simon J. Evenett

The trade policy stance of foreign governments to China’s goods exports is reviewed here. A balanced approach is taken—examining new import reforms facilitating sourcing from China as well as new import curbs. Further perspective is provided by contrasting the treatment of Chinese exports with those from a peer group, the ASEAN nations. This year has seen a fall in the number of new import curbs imposed on Chinese exports—and ASEAN nations were hit almost as often as Chinese peers. Plus, there is little difference in terms of Chinese and ASEAN exports-at-risk from foreign protectionism. Where there is a difference is export exposure to foreign trade reforms, where ASEAN leads. Trading partners may be more reluctant to liberalise where China export strengths. Overall, the evidence implies that, unless future U.S. import tariffs on China are adopted by many other nations, widespread sourcing from China is likely to continue. Derisking and decoupling will remain localised phenomena. Read more

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