Impacts of tariffs and NTMs on beef, pork and poultry trade

Abstract

Though tariffs have declined in recent years, the number of applied non-tariff measures (NTMs) in meat trade has expanded. We estimate the impacts of tariffs and NTMs (sanitary and phytosanitary [SPS] measures, technical barriers to trade [TBTs], quantitative restrictions, and special safeguard measures) on beef, pork and poultry trade using a structural gravity model. Our baseline regression results show tariffs hinder trade, but SPS measures and TBTs on average expand trade for these three meat products. Using the estimates from our structural gravity model, we simulate the differential effects of declining tariffs versus proliferation of NTMs between 2003 and 2019. The simulation results show that tariff reductions during this period expanded global trade by a cumulative US$466.2 million for the three products, ceteris paribus. In contrast, growth in the number of NTMs caused global meat trade to rise by US$8.4 billion. Our findings thus suggest that the marked increase in the number of applied NTMs in recent decades has had a dramatically larger impact on global meat trade than tariff reductions.