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African Apparel Exports, AGOA, and the Trade Preference Illusion

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Author Info

  • Robert J. Rolfe

    (Sonoco International Business Department, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina)

  • Douglas P. Woodward

    (Economics Department, Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina)

Abstract

The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) is a preferential trade agreement between the United States and approved African countries, allowing duty-free and quota-free access to the U.S. market. Following AGOA’s implementation in 2000, several African countries experienced a dramatic increase in exports to the United States. Nevertheless, AGOA exports, employment, and other benefits may prove to be short-term gains. As a form of temporary trade diversion from Asian countries, the increased exports may arise less from competitive advantages than from trade preferences that will erode over time. This paper focuses on garment exports from the African countries most affected by the preferential access with the United States under AGOA. An analysis based on ten-digit HS trade categories shows that African apparel enters the United States at sharply lower unit prices than similar products from China and India. Given Africa’s higher costs, it is believed that this disparity results from specialized production in low-quality garments. We argue that export value and growth, often used to gauge the success of preferential trade agreements like AGOA, can be misleading. To assess the local contribution to the African economy of AGOA benefits, our paper examines value added in Kenya. Given information for each investment in Kenyan EPZs, we calculate local inputs as a percentage of sales and other measures. The results suggest that the real benefits of AGOA in apparel may be smaller than commonly believed.

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File URL: http://www.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1098&context=gej
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Bibliographic Info

Article provided by De Gruyter in its journal Global Economy Journal.

Volume (Year): 5 (2005)
Issue (Month): 3 ()
Pages: 6

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Handle: RePEc:bpj:glecon:v:5:y:2005:i:3:n:6

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Web page: http://www.degruyter.com

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Web: http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/gej

Related research

Keywords: Africa; AGOA; Apparel; Trade Preferences;

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Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. The rise and fall of (Chinese) African apparel exports
    by Pierre-Louis Vézina in The CSAE Blog on 2012-09-24 05:00:43
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
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Cited by:
  1. Pierre-Louis Vezina & Lorenzo Rotunno & Zheng Wang, 2012. "The rise and fall of (Chinese) African apparel exports," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2012-12, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
  2. Edwards, Lawrence & Lawrence, Robert Z., 2011. "AGOA Rules: The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Special Fabric Provisions," Working Paper Series rwp11-002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.

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