Indeed, as conventional trade barriers, such as tariffs and import quotas, have come down over the past half-century, others, such as discriminatory regulations, have sprung up to take their place.
They are usually about explicitly protectionist measures, such as import tariffs or quotas, that keep out foreign goods at the border.
It would be best to broaden the new round to areas such as industrial tariffs, investment and competition policy, to allow more scope for the trade-offs on which a final deal depends.
Countries agreed to lower their most blatant barriers to trade, such as import tariffs or quotas imposed at the border, while intervening at will, with taxes, subsidies and regulations, in their domestic economies.
Dubai gets its revenues from indirect taxes, such as low import tariffs and reasonable fees from its growing airport and seaport traffic.
All the more reason, perhaps, to eschew old-fashioned price-fixing, and to move ahead with the more sensible among their recent proposals, such as cutting import tariffs and encouraging competition.
In a brief spell as finance minister in 1994 (when he belonged to Mr Cardoso's party), Mr Gomes followed the sort of neoliberal policies he now criticises, such as cutting import tariffs to expose the local car industry to foreign competition.
It was embodied in organizations such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund and in treaties such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
He may label them as such but he will never impose the tariffs as business would go crazy!
But the free-trade area is riddled with exemptions: big markets such as Malaysia and Vietnam maintain high tariffs on imported cars.
It said such tariffs compared favourably with other islands such as Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Malta .
Instead, the government was trying to control inflation through unorthodox measures, such as limiting the price of petrol or slashing electricity tariffs and taxes on car sales.
Fine, so long as it subjects such firms to future competition by lowering its tariffs on schedule.
Given the mercantilist mindset of trade negotiations, that will only happen if barriers to industrial goods and services are also reduced, especially by big developing countries such as Brazil and India. (The fact that lower tariffs benefit an importing economy is lost on trade negotiators.) In this area, the Geneva deal achieved less.
ECONOMIST: But the Doha round of trade talks is far from finished
We have -- a lot of countries such as China, Korea, Japan, many European countries have import tariffs that protect their industries.
Tariffs and other trade sanctions have slashed imports from countries such as Russia.
Several countries, particularly Hungary, are on track to essentially never regain their pre-crisis peaks of real output, and others, such as Bulgaria, have had their recoveries derailed by crippling increases in utility tariffs.
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The Renewable Fuel Standard currently requires transportation fuel to contain certain amounts of renewables such as corn grain ethanol regardless of how high it pushes corn prices or how much weather conditions or tariffs on imported ethanol have reduced supplies.
Under the deal with America, deep cuts in tariffs will by made by 2004, to just 14.5% for several bulk commodities such as wheat and maize.
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