Louise Curran

The Impact of Trade Policy on Global Production Networks: The Solar Panel Case

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to shed light on the interactions between public institutions and global production networks (GPNs) through a case study of the 2012–2013 European Union anti-dumping investigation on Chinese solar panels. Drawing on trade data and interviews, as well as press reports and position papers, I analyze the facts of the case and the debate around it and explore the impacts on the geography of production. The case draws attention to two issues which deserve greater attention in research in the GPN tradition. First, the position of companies within a GPN may dictate their political interests more clearly than their nationality. Second, GPNs are seen to be malleable. They can adjust their structures in reaction to new trade restrictions. This fact draws attention to the need to incorporate institutional factors, like trade policy, more effectively into GPN analysis. I propose some criteria to help researchers to do so. Finally, in terms of broader political economy, the case illustrates how, in the post financial crisis context, their domestic market is becoming an important lever for the Chinese government in international negotiations. Thus, at least in the trade sphere, the rise of China as a consumer market is changing global power relations.

Clothing's big bang: the impact of the end of the ATC on developing country clothing suppliers

Purpose – Prior to the liberalisation of the clothing and textiles sector under the Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC) fears had been expressed about the potential impact on developing country suppliers. This paper seeks to establish the actual impact of the liberalisation of the EU and US clothing markets.Design/methodology/approach – Comparison of trade figures pre and post liberalisation.Findings – The paper finds that, as forecast, significant changes occurred in sourcing patterns in the EU almost overnight. The big winners were India and China. Almost all other developing countries lost market share, although often not as much as had been feared. The impact of the liberalisation was mitigated somewhat by the new quantitative restrictions negotiated with China half way through the year, which resulted in a redistribution of market share to other developing countries. Comparisons with the USA indicate that trends are rather similar, although on that market more developing countries saw increases ...

Intermediate Products and the Regionalization of Trade

Purpose – This paper aims to exploit a new trade database to explore the extent to which trade, and the industrial division of labor which it represents, is regional in nature.Design/methodology/approach – The analysis focuses especially on intermediates trade, in three key regions – the EU, NAFTA and ASEAN 3 – which together represent 78 percent of global trade.Findings – The results indicate that levels of regional integration in trade and changes in that integration vary by region and by direction of flow. Notably, the EU has higher levels of intra-regional trade than the other two. These results vary by technology, with high-tech trade less regionally biased than others.Originality/value – Trade data has been little used in the debate on the regionalization of business activity. In addition, the paper highlights trends, not just in total trade, but within intermediate products and by technology.

The EU clothing market in 2008 – opening the floodgates?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to briefly review the trends on clothing imports into the EU in 2008, the year when quantitative restrictions on all EU clothing imports lapsed.Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at trade figures as reported by Eurostat and, in particular changes between 2004‐2008, the period during which clothing trade was liberalised.Findings – The paper finds that clothing imports from China increased in 2008 as predicted by many actors. However the extent of this increase was less than might have been expected from the impact of earlier liberalisations. Several explanations are suggested for this observation. More broadly, the liberalisation of the EU clothing market seems to have had rather negative impacts on clothing suppliers in the EU neighbourhood, while amongst developing country suppliers the impacts have been rather varied, with Bangladesh and India showing quite strong performance while other, often smaller, suppliers have seen rather negative trends. The imp...

How Regional Is the Supply Chain in the Enlarged EU

This paper explores the regionalisation of the European Union’s supply chains and the impact of enlargement by looking at trends in trade in intermediate products between 1995-2007. The findings show that enlargement has not significantly impacted overall levels of regionalization although it has led to quite major changes in the division of labor within the EU. In addition, the impacts have been very varied depending on the sector involved. There has been a greater consolidation of the EU supply chain in medium-tech and up-market goods while in low-market and high-tech goods, market share has been ceded to non-EU sources.

The financial crisis: impact on key clothing markets and suppliers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of the international financial crisis on key clothing markets and their suppliers.Design/methodology/approach – The analysis was undertaken on the basis of trade figures from the International Trade Centre (ITC) and Eurostat over the period 2005‐2009, and in particular over the period July 2007 to July 2009, when the strongest impacts from the crisis can be seen.Findings – The different markets and suppliers have been impacted rather heterogeneously by the crisis. The key regional suppliers to the EU and the USA – Turkey and Mexico – have seen large falls in their clothing exports, as well as their textiles imports and exports. However, the EU has also seen major reductions in its trade. Others have been less strongly affected in the clothing sector. In textiles, trade fell in both directions everywhere, confirming a general tendency for intermediate product trade to be more affected by the crisis than final trade in goods. The research shows th...

Evolution of EU and its Member States' Competitiveness in International Trade

After a long period of domination by the industrialised countries of the North, international trade is today driven by the dynamism of developing countries. This work seeks to analyse how the EU is performing in the light of this emerging competitive threat, by comparing the EU’s export performance on the world market with that of its key competitors between 1995 and 2004. The figures show that the EU has performed particularly well in the more upmarket, expensive and high tech levels of the market. Most notably, Europe is the market leader in up-market products, with almost 31% of the world market in 2004 (versus 20% of the market for all goods). In addition, there is evidence that the EU’s recent enlargement has helped it to maintain a strong performance, thanks to an increasing division of labour within the region. The new member states have become important suppliers of intermediate goods to key EU producers, and in particular German firms, thus becoming increasingly vital to EU competitiveness.

Smoke screen? : The globalization of production, transnational lobbying and the international political economy of plain tobacco packaging

ABSTRACT In 2012, Australia became the first country in the world to introduce plain tobacco packaging in an effort to reduce tobacco consumption. This move was vehemently opposed by the tobacco industry, which challenged it on several levels: nationally, bilaterally and multilaterally at the World Trade Organization (WTO). The political behaviour of the tobacco companies in this case is puzzling both in terms of scale, operating at multiple levels at the same time, and in terms of the countries mobilized in their defence. WTO litigation is typically the result of multinational enterprises (MNEs) lobbying their own government, but here third countries were mobilized. Lobbying in third country contexts, with the objective of accessing multilateral dispute settlement systems, has been little studied. We thus know very little about the driving factors behind such activities, how target governments are selected and what lobbying strategies are used. This article draws on emerging research on transnational lobbying and a case study of the plain packaging case to explore these issues in detail and, by doing so, aims to further our theoretical understanding of the political economy of international trade in the context of increasing regime complexity and globalization of production. In addition, the article sheds new light on advocacy in the context of disputes about cross-border challenges to domestic regulation.

Technology and international orientation: Sectoral differences in home-region orientation.

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to shed light on recent debates in this journal on differences in home‐region orientation depending on type of company and the home region in which they are based.Design/methodology/approach – The paper looks at the structure of trade (imports and exports) across different types of goods in order to shed light on differences between sectors and types of technology. The paper also explores structures across regions in order to shed light on regional differences.Findings – This research indicates that there are major differences in structures of trade between different types of goods. However, these differences do not necessarily conform to a clear pattern across different technological levels and differ between regions and the direction of trade. The fact that Asian cultures have greater psychic distance from European and North American cultures is not reflected in higher levels of home‐region orientation.Research limitations/implications – The paper helps to clarify some...

Regional Integration of Trade in South America: How Far Has It Progressed and in Which Sectors?

This article looks at the regionalization of trade in South America by looking at trends in trade during the 1994–2007 period. It finds that the increasing political will to strengthen regional arrangements, like Mercosur and the Andean Community, has not impacted extensively the overall level of regionalization of trade, which is relatively low and has not changed significantly over the period. Intermediates trade also remains relatively low within the region, which implies that regional production networks are under-developed, although high-tech and medium-tech consumer goods markets are relatively integrated. Overall high-tech trade is not notably more global than trade in other types of technology, except in imports.