How Different Are Safeguards from Antidumping? Evidence from US Trade Policies Toward

How do the trade impacts of a safeguard measure- which is statutorily designed to follow the most-favored-nation (MFN) principle of equal treatment- compare to explicitly discriminatory measures such as antidumping? We address this question empirically by ex-amining the trade effects of the 2002 US safeguard on steel imports and comparing this with the impact of other US trade remedies on steel imports in the 1990s. We first estimate a fixed-effects model on a dynamic panel of product-level US steel imports over 1989-2003 and examine the potential discriminatory impact on foreign-produced steel of the 2002 “MFN” safeguard that used relatively new tools from the policymakers ’ arsenal: country and prod-uct exclusions. A unique data set on the excluded products allows us to document the sizable impact on trade of both forms of preferential treatment. We also exploit higher-frequency (i.e., quarterly) data to examine potential differences in the timing of the foreign export response to policies of differential treatment. With respect to safeguard exclusions, we find that while developed country exporters have a quicker response to an exclusion, the developing-country export response is more persistent. Finally, relative to antidumpin