U.S. trade policy towards developing countries

The United States has often been criticized for protectionist measures taken against developing country products. Yet, average agricultural protection has reemained practically nil in the U.S. over time, while rising in the European Common Market (E.C.M) and, even more, Japan. It further appears that manufactured imports from developing countries have increased much more rapidly, and reached higher levels, in the U.S. than in the E.C.M and, in particular, Japan. The U.S.-Japan comparisons for manufactured goods do not conform to the data on the extent of nontariff barriers, as measured by the share of imports from the developing countries which are subject to such trade barriers. The solution to the puzzle lies in part in the inadequacies of data on the share of imports subject to nontariff measures for gauging the protective effects of such measures and in part in the reliance on formal measures of protection in the United States as against the informal measures in Japan. More generally, one may explain the results obtained by reference to the openness of the U.S. market that has generally been more hospitable to imports from developing countries than have the markets of other industrial countries, particularly Japan.