Notes

Notes

1. The MFA governed world trade in textiles and apparel from 1974 through 2004, with quotas imposed on the totals that certain lowand middle-income countries (LMICs) could export to high-income countries. 2. A companion note provides more details (Forero-Rojas et al. 2018).

The note and the database are both accessible through the World

Bank’s data set page, “Developing Countries’ Trade and Market

Access in the European Union and the United States”: https:// datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/developing-countries%E2%80% 99-trade-and-market-access-european-union-and-united-states -introducing. 3. The ad valorem equivalents are obtained by dividing the specific tariff (or specific component) by the import unit price—itself computed as the median of the unit values of all US imports of a given HS 8-digit product in a given year across partner countries—from the US Census trade data. 4. The quota information obtained from Brambilla, Khandelwal, and

Schott (2010) is available from author Peter K. Schott’s website: https://sompks4.github.io/sub_data.html. 5. For an extensive discussion on “special and differential treatment” and the GSP preferences, see Ornelas (2016). 6. Under the GSP, each preference-granting country establishes specific criteria and conditions for defining and identifying the LMIC beneficiaries. 7. GSP beneficiary countries lose their beneficiary status after the US president determines they have become “high-income” countries (under World Bank income classifications). 8. For more about the GSP LDC criteria, see “Criteria for Identification and Graduation of LDCs” on the United Nations Office of the High

Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked

Developing Countries, and Small Island Development States (OHRLLS) website: https://www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least -developed-country-category/ldc-criteria.html. 9. In practice, these quantitative restrictions were never binding since the onset of the AGOA (USITC 2014). The Special Rule implies that rules of origin for eligible countries are a “single transformation” requirement—that is, the only requirement is that the transformation from fabric to garment is undertaken in the eligible country. 10. The treatment of Mauritius as an LDBC was temporary between 2004 and 2005 and was not renewed in 2006, but it was granted again in 2008 without a fixed term. 11. Additional rules govern the inclusion of interlinings, findings, and trimmings of foreign origin (up to 25 percent in value is allowed) and other minimal fabrics (up to 10 percent in weight).

12. AGOA Extension and Enhancement Act of 2015, Pub. L. 114–27, title

I, §101, 129 Stat. 363 (2015). 13. To be more precise, the MFN zero rate of duty was applicable to any country with normal trade relations with the United States. Exclusions to this rule included Vietnam until 2001. Currently, only Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea do not have normal trade relations with the United States. 14. The difference is explained by 60 tariff lines of the 1,670 that became duty-free under the GSP LDC program in 1997 and were not extended to non-LDC Sub-Saharan African countries after the AGOA. 15. The simplification we implement relative to Nicita (2011) is that we do not consider trade elasticities in the calculation; thus, we assume that all countries’ export flows react similarly to a reduction in tariffs. 16. The definition of manufacturing used in our analysis is provided in annex 2A, which also provides some information on the availability (or lack thereof) of WITS data for Sub-Saharan African countries. 17. “EU-15” refers to the 15 European Union (EU) member states before 2004: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,

Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (which officially withdrew from the EU in

January 2020). 18. As of 2000, the United States was an important destination for the exports of only a handful of countries: Lesotho, Angola, Gabon, and

Nigeria. 19. For each country and subperiod, the compound growth rate r in nominal exports E between year t0 and year T is obtained as the solution to the equation ET = Et0 (1 + r)T–r0 . 20. The three countries with negative export growth in both periods are

Gabon, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau. 21. The low utilization rate observed in the first few years of the AGOA is likely because of an imprecision in our definition of AGOA eligibility for a given country by year, whereas the AGOA entered into force for different countries in different months of the year. 22. Other countries in this group are Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, the Seychelles,

Sierra Leone, and Zambia. 23. Other countries in this group are Botswana, Cabo Verde, Eswatini,

Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and

Uganda. 24. The other country in this group is Mauritius. 25. Other countries in this group are Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania. 26. The specification also includes a term estimating the impact of the

GSP LDC on exports of LDCs outside Africa, which is negative and significant. 27. The baseline estimates are maintained in a series of robustness checks that are presented and discussed in Fernandes et al. (2019).