Preferential Access to the United States and Manufacturing Export Performance: A Product-Level Analysis 107
Notes 1. The MFA governed world trade in textiles and apparel from 1974 through 2004, with quotas imposed on the totals that certain lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) could export to high-income countries. 2. A companion note provides more details (Forero-Rojas et al. 2018). The note and the database are both accessible through the World Bank’s data set page, “Developing Countries’ Trade and Market Access in the European Union and the United States”: https:// datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/developing-countries%E2%80% 99-trade-and-market-access-european-union-and-united-states -introducing. 3. The ad valorem equivalents are obtained by dividing the specific tariff (or specific component) by the import unit price—itself computed as the median of the unit values of all US imports of a given HS 8-digit product in a given year across partner countries—from the US Census trade data. 4. The quota information obtained from Brambilla, Khandelwal, and Schott (2010) is available from author Peter K. Schott’s website: https://sompks4.github.io/sub_data.html. 5. For an extensive discussion on “special and differential treatment” and the GSP preferences, see Ornelas (2016). 6. Under the GSP, each preference-granting country establishes specific criteria and conditions for defining and identifying the LMIC beneficiaries. 7. GSP beneficiary countries lose their beneficiary status after the US president determines they have become “high-income” countries (under World Bank income classifications). 8. For more about the GSP LDC criteria, see “Criteria for Identification and Graduation of LDCs” on the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, and Small Island Development States (OHRLLS) website: https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least -developed-country-category/ldc-criteria.html. 9. In practice, these quantitative restrictions were never binding since the onset of the AGOA (USITC 2014). The Special Rule implies that rules of origin for eligible countries are a “single transformation” requirement—that is, the only requirement is that the transformation from fabric to garment is undertaken in the eligible country. 10. The treatment of Mauritius as an LDBC was temporary between 2004 and 2005 and was not renewed in 2006, but it was granted again in 2008 without a fixed term. 11. Additional rules govern the inclusion of interlinings, findings, and trimmings of foreign origin (up to 25 percent in value is allowed) and other minimal fabrics (up to 10 percent in weight).