We analyze the relationship between PP regimes and trade policy activism during the first seven months of the COVID-19 pandemic using cross-country information on attributes of precrisis national public procurement regimes (World Bank, 2020), the coverage of PP in trade agreements (Shingal and Ereshchenko, 2020) and data on changes in trade policy for medical products implemented by governments during January-July 2020 (Evenett et al., 2020). A key feature of the trade policy data is that information is available on a weekly basis, permitting analysis of when trade liberalizing and restrictive policy instruments were imposed and removed.

Our results suggest that after controlling for country size, government effectiveness, economic factors and the incidence of COVID-19 cases, restrictions on exports of medical products and import liberalization are positively correlated with pre-crisis attributes of PP regimes. The total number of steps, in particular, and time taken to complete procurement processes are strongly associated with reducing import barriers and imposition of export controls. Membership of trade agreements with public procurement disciplines – both PTAs and the WTO GPA – is associated with greater openness, reflected in actions to facilitate trade in medical products.

The rest of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 briefly discusses related literature. Section 3 provides an overview of the use of trade policy between January and July 2020. Section 4 presents the empirical methodology. Section 5 discusses the data sources for the explanatory and control variables and provides some descriptive statistics for these variables. Section 6 discusses the estimation results. Section 7 concludes.

# **2. Related literature and hypotheses**

We are not aware of studies that analyze the relationship between public procurement and trade policy responses during public health emergencies. The extant studies on public procurement and COVID-19 include a focus on strategies procuring authorities can (should) use to rapidly ramp up purchases of essential products needed by public health authorities and care providers. Procurement of health care-related products usually involves a prolonged multi-stage process that takes time. In times of crisis procuring agencies may need to dispense with normal practices to meet urgent needs for critical equipment and supplies (Sanchez-Graells, 2020). This could include responding to firms that make unsolicited proposals (Baxter and Casady, 2020) and partnership-based approaches with the private sector or other governments (Vecchi et al. 2020). In the case of the EU, the European Commission took several measures to facilitate procurement of essential supplies, including through a (voluntary) coordinated joint procurement mechanism (Beuter, 2020; European Commission, 2020). Some governments directly contracted with large producers, bypassing standard competitive procedures stipulated in public procurement regulations (Hoekman et al. 2020). While warranted, there are risks associated with diverging from standard PP practices, including higher cost procurement, greater vulnerability to fraud, and diminished accountability and less transparency in contracting (Atkinson et al. 2020).

Trade can play a pivotal role in emergencies to ensure that much needed medical supplies get to where they are needed (Gereffi, 2020; OECD, 2020b). Instead, what was observed during the COVID-19 outbreak – amidst shortages of medical supplies – was some governments imposing export control measures and requisitioning domestic supplies of essential goods. Such reactions may exacerbate rather than facilitate provision of vital equipment to healthcare workers by increasing prices, market volatility and distorting investment decisions (Fiorini et 3