Global Overview of Trade Policies

The lack of progress in the Doha negotiations does not mean that trade policies have remained just as they were at the start of the Cycle in 2001. A new version of the MAcMapHS6 database, which contains the bilateral tariff protection agreements of 170 countries, covering more than 5,000 products, can be used to give the most recent picture of these protections. We are interested not only in measuring the tariff barriers which countries maintain to protect their domestic markets, but also evaluating those encountered by their exports in external markets, including tariff preferences. The whole of this data taken together highlights the interests of the various players and helps us understand the positions they defend in multilateral negotiations.