Fishing downstream revisited : A multi-country analysis of anti-dumping patterns

A long-held view in international trade policy analysis is that import protection flows downstream. This paper updates the descriptive analysis of Feinberg and Kaplan (1993), looking at trends in upstream and downstream antidumping and countervailing-duty cases since the US Trade Agreements Act of 1979. It covers the period from 1980 to 2015 for the five leading users of temporary trade barriers (TTBs): Argentina, Brazil, the European Union, India, and the United States. We examine evidence for two broad sectors which have dominated the use of TTBs: metals and chemicals. Both via descriptive trend analysis and simple statistical estimation, we find suggestive evidence in support of cascading trade protection, though more so for the developing countries studied.