IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/uitjxx/v31y2017i5p457-478.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The United States Free Trade Agreements: How Successful Have They Been?

Author

Listed:
  • Andreas Udbye

Abstract

The United States has entered into Free Trade Agreements with 20 countries. Did these agreements boost trade—especially exports—beyond that experienced by a control group of 80 other countries? Did the efforts and costs in implementing and maintaining these agreements yield incremental trade? Discussing five attenuating factors and introducing a method utilizing compound annual growth rates, we compared the pre- and post-implementation trade growth of the agreements, and also against the control group. Results are mixed and some agreements disappoint, possibly with basis in an attenuating factor. The overall effect on U.S. exports from the agreements is low.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreas Udbye, 2017. "The United States Free Trade Agreements: How Successful Have They Been?," The International Trade Journal, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(5), pages 457-478, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:uitjxx:v:31:y:2017:i:5:p:457-478
    DOI: 10.1080/08853908.2017.1362365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/08853908.2017.1362365
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/08853908.2017.1362365?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995. "The Politics of Free-Trade Agreements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 667-690, September.
    2. Baier, Scott L. & Bergstrand, Jeffrey H., 2007. "Do free trade agreements actually increase members' international trade?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 72-95, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shadrack Muthami Mwatu & Charity Kageni Mbaka & John Gakuu Karanja & Grace Mukami Muriithi, 2024. "Trade Agreements, Technical Regulations, and Standards: Competitiveness Implications for Kenyan Exporters to European Union," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 36(2), pages 381-410, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Guglielmo Caporale & Christophe Rault & Robert Sova & Anamaria Sova, 2009. "On the bilateral trade effects of free trade agreements between the EU-15 and the CEEC-4 countries," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 145(3), pages 573-573, October.
    2. Ornelas, Emanuel & Tovar, Patricia, 2022. "Intra-bloc tariffs and preferential margins in trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    3. Egger, Hartmut & Egger, Peter & Greenaway, David, 2008. "The trade structure effects of endogenous regional trade agreements," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 278-298, March.
    4. Fugazza, Marco & Nicita, Alessandro, 2011. "Measuring preferential market access," MPRA Paper 38565, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Antoni Estevadeordal & Caroline Freund & Emanuel Ornelas, 2008. "Does Regionalism Affect Trade Liberalization Toward Nonmembers?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(4), pages 1531-1575.
    6. Baccini, Leonardo, 2010. "Explaining formation and design of EU trade agreements: the role of transparency and flexibility," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 45565, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    7. Joachim Jarreau, 2014. "Terms-of-Trade Impacts of Trade Agreements and the Choice of Trade Policy," AMSE Working Papers 1430, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France, revised 11 Jul 2014.
    8. Christopher S.P. Magee, 2017. "The Increasing Irrelevance of Trade Diversion," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 70(2), pages 278-305, May.
    9. Andreas Dür & Leonardo Baccini & Manfred Elsig, 2014. "The design of international trade agreements: Introducing a new dataset," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 9(3), pages 353-375, September.
    10. Maggi, Giovanni, 2014. "International Trade Agreements," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 317-390, Elsevier.
    11. Fugazza, Marco & Nicita, Alessandro, 2013. "The direct and relative effects of preferential market access," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(2), pages 357-368.
    12. Dick Nuwamanya Kamuganga, 2012. "The Linkage between Outcome Differences in Cotton Production and Rural Roads Improvements - A Matching Approach," IHEID Working Papers 15-2012, Economics Section, The Graduate Institute of International Studies.
    13. Giovanni Facchini & Peri Silva & Gerald Willmann, 2015. "The Political Economy of Preferential Trade Arrangements: An Empirical Investigation," Discussion Papers 2015-16, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    14. Yi Yi Mon & Seunghoo Lim & Makoto Kakinaka, 2019. "Multiplex Relations between States: Coevolution of Trade Agreements and Political Alliances," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(14), pages 1-24, July.
    15. Tareg Ghazi Alghabbabsheh & Saleh Saud AlSaif & Md Saiful Islam & Tareq Saeed AlShammari & Ali M A Mahmoud, 2022. "Have Bilateral Free Trade Agreements (BFTAs) been beneficial? Lessons learned from 11 U.S. BFTAs between 1992 and 2017," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(4), pages 1-21, April.
    16. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    17. Doukoure Charle Fe, 2021. "Trade flows between the West African Economic and Monetary Union's members so little: does exports structure matter ?," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(2), pages 816-833.
    18. Thomas L. Vollrath & Mark J. Gehlhar & Charles B. Hallahan, 2009. "Bilateral Import Protection, Free Trade Agreements, and Other Factors Influencing Trade Flows in Agriculture and Clothing," Journal of Agricultural Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 298-317, June.
    19. Scott Gehlbach & Konstantin Sonin & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2010. "Businessman Candidates," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 718-736, July.
    20. Felbermayr Gabriel & Steininger Marina, 2019. "Revisiting the Euro’s Trade Cost and Welfare Effects," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 239(5-6), pages 917-956, October.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:uitjxx:v:31:y:2017:i:5:p:457-478. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/uitj20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.