# **2.2.1 Developed economy imposers of TTBs**

Begin with the panels of figure 1, which illustrate the results for the main developed G20‐economy users of TTBs.<sup>15</sup> Consider the case of a policy‐imposing country like the United States.<sup>16</sup> The consistency of the data on the use of TTBs with broad macroeconomic trends is visible in both panel 1a and panel 1b; with spikes in flows (and increases to stocks) taking place in the 1990‐91 recession, in response to the 1997‐ 98 Asian crisis which saw surges in imports, and in the 2001‐02 recession.<sup>17</sup> Over time, most of the products subject to a U.S. TTB have been affected by (at least) the antidumping policy; the major exception is the 2002‐2003 period during which a large number of imported steel products were not subject to antidumping but a global safeguard. During the 1997‐2007 period, the share of annual HS‐06 U.S. imported products subject to a TTB peaked at slightly more than 6%, though the peaks took place in different years depending on whether the measurement is by _counts_ of products (2003) or the trade‐ weighted _value_ of imports (2001). This divergence between the stock series of products subject to all TTBs in figure 1a versus figure 1b implies that while the (net) count of HS‐06 products subject to U.S.‐ imposed TTBs increased between 2001 and 2003, the products for which the TTBs were being _removed_ during 2001‐2003 were a much larger share of the value of overall U.S. imports than the products for which new TTBs were being imposed.<sup>18</sup> Finally, it is worth noting that according to both modes of measurement, the share of imports subject to U.S. TTBs is substantially lower in 2007 than it was during its peak of the 1997‐2007 period. Using the _value_ approach in particular, 2.33% of imports were covered in 2007 as compared to a 2001 peak of 6.14% of imports. The timing of the decline starting from that 15 In addition to the fourteen TTB‐using G20 economies that I discuss below, I have also constructed TTB measures for more than 20 other policy‐imposing economies with data available in the Temporary Trade Barriers Database. Because of space constraints I do not report on them here but instead focus primarily on the G20 economies as users and (in section 4 below) the exporters that ship products to the G20 import markets.

16 Another item to note for the U.S. is that it had been using these policies (antidumping in particular) prior to 1990, and thus there is an underlying stock of products affected by these policies that I am not capturing, since I am starting with barriers first imposed in 1990. (This is due to consistency of access to import classification under the Harmonized System which took hold across countries only in 1988). This will also apply to Australia, Canada, and the European Union who each had a substantial stock of antidumping barriers in place by the time the HS system started in 1988.

17 This is consistent with other research linking antidumping use, in particular, with business cycle fluctuations such as changes in real GDP and currency movements. See Knetter and Prusa (2003).

18 Again, following the discussion of equation (2), the share of imports for products that had been subject to a previous TTB that was being removed would be based on what the product’s share of the U.S. import market had been prior to the TTB first being imposed.

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