It is also worth bearing in mind that import quotas can be just as protectionist as tariffs.
Under the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, the U.S. protects its textile manufacturers by imposing rigid import quotas on developing countries.
UNCTAD's project on market access, notes that poor countries often fail to fill Europe's existing preferential import quotas.
On our side, we could agree to reform or scrap our protectionist dumping laws and a host of import quotas.
Remember, it was political mastermind Rove who whispered for steel import quotas in 2001 (pandering to Pennsylvania and West Virginia).
But in the United States they would still be held back by import quotas and heavy subsidies to domestic producers.
Import quotas have largely been replaced with customs duties, and subsidies, tax breaks and other special favours for farmers scaled back.
That collapse helped precipitate the terrible farm bill of 2002 and the Bush Administration's ill-advised foray into protectionism via steel import quotas.
Even if China does away with import quotas and dismantles tariff barriers, its markets will not be free in any meaningful sense.
President Bush is close to agreeing import quotas and tariffs on foreign steel, it says, and the emergency loan could have been secured with the right effort.
Indeed, as conventional trade barriers, such as tariffs and import quotas, have come down over the past half-century, others, such as discriminatory regulations, have sprung up to take their place.
Yet growers there, in South Africa and in Mozambique have to struggle against import quotas and a low world sugar price, thanks to heavy subsidies for farmers in Europe and America.
So the lifting at the beginning of this year of textile-import quotas in Europe and America brought both an opportunity to exceed quota levels and a risk of loss of market share to a newly unfettered competitor.
ECONOMIST: China has won; but so far, South Asia has not lost
In contrast, Mr. McCain has even proposed tax cuts here, pledging to repeal the 54 cents per gallon tariff on sugar-based ethanol, as well as sugar import quotas, which should help to lower prices for gas and food.
They are usually about explicitly protectionist measures, such as import tariffs or quotas, that keep out foreign goods at the border.
Countries agreed to lower their most blatant barriers to trade, such as import tariffs or quotas imposed at the border, while intervening at will, with taxes, subsidies and regulations, in their domestic economies.
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