Domestic fruit and vegetable producers contend that rising imports during seasonal harvesting windows have negatively impacted domestic prices and revenue. This study simulates producers’ revenue with the removal of above-average imports as defined by the U.S. International Trade Commission. Results indicate significant additional revenues to domestic producers in the simulated scenario. Also, additional revenues to producers by state and season show substantial heterogeneity with robustness checks revealing similar patterns. Options such as risk management and technological improvements are needed to enhance the competitiveness of U.S. fresh produce industries instead of limiting imports in the absence of illegal dumping.

In 2018 and 2019, China’s outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) and the U.S.–China trade war captured media headlines worldwide. This research uses a unique data set of media headlines and sentiments to estimate the impact of media on U.S. lean hog futures prices for nearby and distant expiration contracts. Findings suggest futures prices are influenced by news media content, with results differing by time to contract expiration and sentiment of the headline. International headlines with positive and negative connotations toward ASF and trade war have more significant effects, indicating sensationalist media creates the greatest price movements compared to neutral headlines.

Our paper sheds light on Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) cooperation among trading countries. We contribute to the existing literature a data-driven analysis on the effectiveness of various forms (in monetary value, duration, and diversification) of SPS related technical assistance received by 33 countries from 1993 to 2015. The World Trade Organization's (WTO's) SPS Agreement encourages biosecurity for countries through technical assistance, to safeguard human health and productivity from contamination by biological hazards (pests, pathogens, or invasive species). Our panel model finds that WTO's SPS program encourages simultaneously agricultural trade and biosecurity. We implement a Multiple Indicator Solution (MIS) to correct bias from the endogenous technical assistance. The effectiveness of technical assistance depends on geography and the level of development among the heterogeneous countries referred to in our data. This investment in biosecurity benefits both donors and recipients of technical assistance. Based on our results donors should be encouraged to invest in countries with below average resources and abilities.

China has been one of the most important sources of growth in global wine demand this century, accounting for 7% of the world's wine consumption and imports by 2017, or four times its 2005 shares. But China's per capita wine consumption peaked in 2012, has fallen every year since 2017, and in 2022 was one-third of its peak, and its imports have more than halved since 2017. Certainly, the COVID-19 disruption and associated slowdown in China's income growth would account for some of that. However, the fall in China's alcohol consumption began three years earlier, and between 2019 and 2022, the fall was considerably larger for wine (47%) than for spirits (17%) and beer (3%). Thus, wine's share of alcohol consumption in China fell by two-fifths over those three years. The article speculates on the reasons behind the dramatic downturn in this globally important market and finishes by imagining future trends and drawing implications for wine-exporting countries.

Over the past three decades, tariff protection to farmers has fallen and partly been replaced by domestic support, whilst support for farmers in some emerging economies has grown. Against that backdrop, this paper provides new estimates of national economic impacts of global agricultural tariffs and domestic supports. Using the latest global economy-wide GTAP (Global Trade Analysis Project) model calibrated to 2017, we simulate (a) the removal of food and agricultural domestic supports and agri-food tariffs and (b) the removal also of tariffs on imports of non-agricultural goods. We find that agricultural support policies are still an important part of the global welfare cost of all goods’ trade-restrictive policies (albeit only half as costly as in 2001), and tariffs still dominate the global welfare cost of all farm-support programs. That farm support could be re-instrumented to relieve natural resource and environmental stresses, boost food and nutrition security, and alleviate poverty and income inequality.

The profitability of U.S. meat producers and the utility of U.S. meat consumers are impacted by the trade of meat. USDA publishes the most prominent publicly available meat trade projections. This study finds USDA projections typically underpredict meat export volumes and overpredict meat import volumes. USDA projections outperform naïve projections for beef and pork exports, but naïve projections at times outperform USDA projections for chicken exports and beef and pork imports, especially at shorter horizons. USDA projections exclude variety cuts, which comprise a sizeable share of beef and pork exports. There remains room for improvement in projecting U.S. meat trade.

This article deals with the rehabilitation of economies in post-conflict states, paying particular attention to the role played by the state in this process. Using the example of Cambodia and its policies on rice production and export, the article shows the prominent role that may be played by the state in prioritised areas of economic development where there has been market failure. In the Cambodian case, the government targeted rice production and export as these had great potential for promoting the major aims of national development policy – economic growth and poverty alleviation. Using a whole-of-government approach and a combination of direct involvement and the creation of an enabling environment, the government appears to have contributed to vastly increased rice production and export.

This study uses gravity models to explain bilateral patterns of global wine trade since 1962. This is, to our knowledge, the first study on global wine trade covering the second wave of globalization as a whole. The results suggest that the impact of distance, common language, and common colonizer post-1945 on wine trade was lower in the 1991–2019 period than in the 1962–1990 period. We also use gravity models to explain the impact on bilateral wine trade patterns of similarities across countries in the mix of winegrape varieties in their vineyards. Although our models do not allow us to identify causality, the results suggest that countries trade more wine with each other the closer their mix of winegrape varieties.

Global agro-food trade grew strongly during the first globalisation. The increase in demand, the fall in trade costs, liberal policies and technological advances explain this expansion in trade. Within this context, this study analyses the formation and evolution of the international market of a special product: meat. It is a peculiar product because it is perishable. Furthermore, it is important to point out that the increase in its trade was based mostly on the strong demand in the United Kingdom, which acquired an almost monopsonist position, and also on the diffusion of mechanical refrigeration. This enabled the countries of the Río de la Plata, particularly Argentina, together with Australia and New Zealand to become world leaders in meat exports.

Asian countries consume approximately 90% of the world’s rice supply. Between 2007 and 2014, Thailand, Vietnam, and India accounted for 60% of the world’s exports of rice. A nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL) econometric model is utilized to estimate the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on rice trade in Southeast Asia. Focusing on the largest importing countries and exporting country by volume, the analysis considers Malaysian, Indonesian, the Philippines, and Chinese rice imports from Thailand. Results show that importing countries’ state trading enterprises (STEs) generally do not follow profit-maximizing behavior in reacting to exchange rate volatility.

This paper estimates changes in demand for imported wines by source country and resulting welfare effects due to Section 301 tariffs imposed on certain European wines in October 2019. A two-stage expenditure allocation scheme is used to estimate the import demand for red, white, and other wines in the first stage, and source-differentiated red wine and white wine demand in the second stage. From derived price elasticities measuring first and second stage interactions, welfare measures are simulated capturing effects of the new tariffs on both taxed and non-taxed exporters as well as the US importers of red and white wine.

This paper assesses key issues in the dispute over the United States’ claim that for certain grains China exceeded its limits on domestic support under the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) during 2012–2015. The panel first determined that the base years for the reference price in calculating China's market price support were 1996–1998, rather than 1986–1988 as stipulated in the AoA, and that production in the geographic regions where the support programs operated, not the smaller quantities purchased at administered prices, constituted eligible production. The panel then found China had exceeded its limits in each of the four years for wheat, Indica rice, and Japonica rice. The possibility was left open that a government can determine eligible production by setting maximum purchases at support prices in its regulatory framework. China used this option to claim that its programs for 2020 implemented the recommendations and rulings of the DSB. We argue that use of outdated fixed external reference prices to measure the price gap and to define eligible production by limits on purchases, distance calculation under the AoA from economic support measurement. The measurement issues compound the discord among Members over levels of agricultural support.

Bilateral trade agreements between Japan and major wine-exporting countries have resulted in tariff eliminations in Japan. This raises questions about how tariffs affect the competitiveness of wine-exporting countries. The generalized dynamic Rotterdam model was used in estimating Japanese wine demand by source. Estimates were then used to project the impact of tariffs on imports of Australian, Chilean, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and U.S. wine. Tariff reductions primarily benefit affected countries, with limited adverse effects on competing countries. The elimination of tariffs on U.S. wine should offset any losses from competing trade agreements.

Focusing on seven major agricultural commodities with a long history of trade, this study employs data-driven analytics to decipher patterns of trade, namely using supervised machine learning (ML), as well as neural networks. The supervised ML and neural network techniques are trained on data until 2010 and 2014, respectively. Results show the high relevance of ML models to forecasting trade patterns in near- and long-term relative to traditional approaches, which are often subjective assessments or time-series projections. While supervised ML techniques quantified key economic factors underlying agricultural trade flows, neural network approaches provide better fits over the long term.

The U.S. regulatory response to the import of potentially contaminated food from Japan following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility meltdown has not been closely examined. The incident caused global concern about the safety of foods imported from Japan. U.S. scientists and policymakers conducted an initial evaluation of the potential health risks, analyzed information and data from foreign governments and international organizations, adopted an import alert, and conducted extensive monitoring. They did not detect radionuclides in, adopt a ban on, or advise consumers to alter their consumption of foods from Japan. Using a modified Global Simulation Model, National Marine Fisheries Service monthly seafood import data and United Nations trade data, we performed a comprehensive retrospective benefit-cost analysis of U.S. actions on U.S.-Japan trade in fish and seafood. We estimate that U.S. regulatory policy preserved approximately $150 million in annual consumer surplus from the continued import of Japanese fish and seafood (at a cost of less than $1 million for import sampling), while finding no additional exposure to harmful radionuclides. The lesson of our analysis is that investment in regulatory infrastructure has tangible economic benefits, and that retrospective benefit-cost analysis can be a useful framework for evaluating catastrophe risk-related policy strategies.

We estimated the impact of the Indian tariff on the demand for imported fresh apples from theUnited States. A 1% decrease in the tariff would increase the quantities demanded by 3.83%. If India eliminates the tariff on all imported fresh apples, total consumer welfare in terms of the imported fresh apple market will increase by $120 million yearly, 57% of the value of all fresh apples imported by India in 2015. This study adds evidence on the effects of tariff reduction on trade volume and welfare of consumers in the importing country.

We present a game-theoretical model arguing that greater public transparency does not necessarily lead to higher social welfare. Political agents can benefit from providing citizens with misleading information aimed at aligning citizens’ choices with the political agents’ preferences. Citizens can lose from being fooled by political agents, though they can mitigate their losses by conducting costly inspections to detect false information. Producing and detecting false information is costly and can reduce social welfare.

Export tax reform in Argentina could improve its competitiveness in China’s soybean market, displacing exports from competing countries like Brazil and the United States. We examined the factors that determine China’s demand for imported soybean products and how export taxes could affect exporting countries. Using import demand and vector autoregression estimates, we conducted simulations of China’s import demand assuming the elimination of export taxes in Argentina. Results indicated that Argentine soybean products could realize gains in the Chinese market, but only in the short run. Projected import demand changes in the long run were insignificant for all exporting countries.

Korea replaced its rice import quota with a tariff rate quota (TRQ) in 2015. A structural model representing the Korean rice market is developed to evaluate this new trade policy and examine the possibility of Korean rice imports under uncertainty. Results indicate that rice imports in excess of the current TRQ quantity are unlikely for a range of market conditions. Two scenarios, which are the over-quota tariff rate reduction and the TRQ quantity expansion, show how the market responds to policy changes. In addition, Korean rice imports are sensitive to consumer preferences for different rice types.

This study connects Mexico’s imports of U.S. broiler meat with its imports of feed products. Two demand systems for Mexico are estimated: a two-stage Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) model for broiler meat and a demand for feed derived from a translog cost function representing the production of Mexican chickens. The models are estimated using data from 1997 to 2016. Given a change in policy where Mexico completely replaces U.S. broiler meat imports, the imports of U.S. feed products will increase. If Mexico does not completely replace U.S. imports with domestic broiler production, our model suggests that Mexican imports of U.S. feed fall.