| 21 January, Friday (11:00am-12:30pm) Session 5A: Production and Global Value Chains |
Trade Interdependencies in COVID-19 related Essential Medical Goods
Author/s: Saschita Basu Das, Rahul Sen
COVID-19 had presented immense challenges for international trade raising concerns about protectionism involving bilateral merchandise trade. Trade in medical goods got hampered by trade barriers or faced difficulties due to geographic concentration of major manufacturers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Using the Harmonised System (HS) 2017 (6-digit) classification of international trade, we propose to analyze the extent of production fragmentation in medical goods trade in selected Asia-Pacific countries. It proposes to estimate production fragmentation through a decomposition of intra-industry trade in intermediate goods into horizontal and vertical intra-industry trade over the period 2005-2019. The objective of the paper is to find the extent of production fragmentation in medical goods and examine the trade barriers faced by these goods during the health crisis of 2020-2021. The paper will take into consideration the lists developed by Helble (2012), WTO information note dated 30 June 2021 (WTO 2021) and the World Customs Organization (2020). It will provide policy recommendations to facilitate trade in medical goods to support the global value chain, diversify risks away from single source country and strengthening regional cooperation.
JEL codes: F12, F13, R11