University of Salzburg, project TRADEPOWER



This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 724107). We gratefully acknowledge research assistance from David Presberger. Finally, we are very grateful to the many respondents for their support for this research.


INTRODUCTION

In spring 2019, as part of the TRADEPOWER project, we carried out a survey of organizations on their trade policy views. The key aim of the TRADEPOWER project is to explain cross-country variation in bargaining power in international trade negotiations. Next to the survey, we use trade data, stock market data, and case studies to address this question. The survey allows us to get experts’ perceptions of trade negotiations and trade agreements.

Throughout the survey, by “trade agreement” we understand agreements signed by countries to facilitate trade and investments across borders. Important recent examples for such agreements are the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), or the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement (ChAFTA).

In the following, we first introduce some aggregate statistics on the respondents to the survey and then present a series of key findings.


THE SURVEY

Whom we contacted

We started with a list of 2841 business associations, professional associations, labour unions, and NGOs across the globe that are potentially interested in trade policy. As indication of an interest in trade policy, we used their:

  • attendance at one of the WTO’s ministerial meetings;
  • appearance in the EU’s Transparency Register and selection of trade policy as field of interest;
  • participation in one of the EU’s Civil Society Dialogues with third countries; or
  • appearance as organizers of the ASEAN Civil Society Conference.

The responding organizations

We received responses from 691 organizations. This amounts to a response rate of 24.3 percent. The resulting sample includes various types of organizations:

Type of organization Percentage
Business association 53.1%
Civil society group (NGO) 29.5%
Professional association 9%
Labour union 8.4%

Map of respondents’ nationality

We received answers from organizations worldwide:

However, the majority of respondents are based in Europe:

Continent Percentage
Europe 77.7%
Americas 9.7%
Asia 7.2%
Africa 4.9%
International 0.3%


Responding organizations vary considerably in terms of number of employees and annual budget:

  • The number of full-time staff ranges from zero (i.e. only volunteers working for an organization) to 4,000.
  • The majority of organizations employ between three and 40 people full-time.
  • Only five respondents indicated that their organization has more than 1,000 employees.

Budget numbers show a similarly heterogeneous picture:

  • Some organizations have annual budgets exceeding 100 million EUR, whereas 50 percent of respondents have 600,000 EUR or less

  • We also see considerable variation across continents:

    • The median annual budget for European organizations is 760,000 EUR.
    • For African organizations it is only 290,000 EUR.


Sources of funding

European organizations rely on membership fees for more than 50 percent of their budget. Other sources play a much smaller role. Govermental funding is most important in Asia, where membership fees amount to less than a quarter of the entire budget.


THE FINDINGS

Importance of trade agreements to the respondents

As expected given our approach to selecting organizations for this survey, trade policy is of importance to most of our rerspondents:

  • For the majority of respondents (65.8 percent), monitoring and influencing trade agreements is very or fairly important.
  • 19.8 percent see it as important.
  • Only 14.4 percent indicated that trade agreements are of little or no importance to their organization.

Relevance of issues potentially covered in trade agreements

We asked the respondents to indicate how relevant the following issues are for their organization. You can compare the answers of different types of organizations by clicking on the second tab below.

All organizations

The majority of respondents indicated that most issues are important for their organization. The most relevant topics are environmental standards and tariffs, with 69 and 65 percent (respectively) of respondents choosing fairly or very relevant.

Compare types of organizations

Please choose an issue to compare organizations:

The differences across types of organizations are surprisingly small on these issues. For example, approximately the same share of business associations and NGOs considers environmental provisions in trade agreement fairly or very relevant.

Views on economic policy

Interest groups and civil society groups adopt different positions with respect to important questions of public policy. We asked our respondents to indicate to what extent their organization agrees with the following statements.

You can compare across continents or types of organizations by clicking on the second and third tab below.

All statements

Only 7 percent of respondents think that economic growth should take priority over environmental protection. 57 percent of respondents think that international trade should be as free as possible, but roughly half also indicated that they approve of state intervention in the economy.

Compare continents

Please choose a statement to compare across continents:

African and Asian organizations are much more supportive of globalization than organizations from Europe or the Americas. At the same time, African organizations are also much more supportive of state intervention in the economy.

Compare types of organizations

Please choose a statement to compare across types of organizations:

We also find considerable differences across types of organizations. Especially business associations and labour unions starkly differ in their views on economic policy.

Views on trade policy

Interest organizations and civil society groups also differ in their views towards trade agreements. To what extent do the respondents agree with our proposed statements?

Use the tabs below to switch between all results, and our interactive plots allowing comparisons across continents and types of organizations.

All statements

Most organizations (77 to 85 percent) think that trade liberalization has to be accompanied by strong protection for the environment, labour standards, consumer standards, and intellectual property rights. More than 60 percent of the respondents think that countries with larger markets have more power in trade negotiations. Nevertheless, there is also much confidence in the principle of reciprocity that tends to guide trade negotiations.

Compare continents

Please choose a statement to compare continents:

The differences across continents for this set of questions are less significant than for the previous set of questions. However, it is interesting to note that especially European organizations see trade agreements as creating a win-win situation for all participating countries.

Compare types of organizations

Please choose a statement to compare across types of organization:

We again find considerable differences across types of organizations in their views on trade policy. Business associations tend to have a more positive view of trade liberalization and trade negotiations than other types of organizations. However, even most business associations support the inclusion of labour, environmental, and consumer clauses in trade agreements.

Views on the impact of trade agreements

What effects did trade agreements have on our respondents’ respective countries? The first tab shows responses across all organizations that responded. You can compare responses across different types of organizations in the second tab below:

All issues

Most respondents think that trade agreements have had a positive effect on economic growth, employment and international investments.

Compare types of organizations

Please choose a statement to compare continents:

The evidence again supports the notion that business associations tend to see trade agreements in a quite positive light: on any of the eight issues, only a tiny minority of business associations see negative effects from trade agreements. Especially labour unions, but also some NGOs, tend to stress negative impacts from trade agreements.

Constraining effects of trade agreements

We also asked respondents to indicate to which extent trade agreements constrain their governments to regulate on issues such as consumer protection or environmental protection.

Only around 20 percent of respondents think that trade agreements are constraining their governments’ ability to regulate in the areas mentioned above.

Lobbying on specific trade agreements

We also asked respondents to indicate the trade agreement/trade negotiation that their organization has been most active on.

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) (135 respondents) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) (62 respondents) were mentioned most frequently.

  • 57 percent either support or strongly support the agreement they chose.
  • 19.6 percent indicated that they neither support nor oppose the agreement.
  • 23.4 percent oppose or oppose it strongly.

Support is much stronger among business associations (76 percent either support or strongly support the agreement) than among other types of organizations (e.g. only 31 percent for labour unions).

Views on the trade agreements respondents actively follow

In the first question specifically aimed at the trade agremeent/the trade negotiations indicated by the respondents, we asked about their views with respect to the agreement’s/negotiation’s impact across a series of issue areas:

Note: We omitted the neither/nor responses from this graph.

On average, respondents have a rather positive view of the trade agreements they actively follow, especially with respect to the promotion of investments and economic growth.

Lobbying tactics

How do organizations try to influence trade negotiations? We again asked this question for the specific trade agreements respondents were most active on.

Respondents consider as important a variety of tactics that can be used to influence trade negotiations. Key, however, is having direct contacts with decision-makers.

Influence on trade agreements

Finally, we also asked respondents about the influence they could exert on the negotiation and/or the implementation of the trade agreement they were most active on. In the following, we show the responses by continent (first tab) and by type of organization (second tab):

By continent

On average, respondents from African and American organizations think they have more influence on the negotiation or implementation of trade agreements than respondents from Europe and Asia do. The mean value for African organizations is 5.9, in Europe it is only 4.3.


By type of organization

We also find differences across types of organizations with respect to this question. Business associations indicate that they have considerably more influence on trade negotiations/agreements than professional associations (means of 4.8 and 3.5, respectively.


CONCLUSION

On average, the groups that responded to our survey tend to have a positive view of trade agreements, although with some differences across types of organizations. Only few respondents stress potential negative effects of trade agreements.

Still, there is also broad support for the inclusion of non-trade issues, such as environmental or human rights clauses, in trade agreements. This is true for both business associations and other types of organizations.

As this is (to our knowledge) the first attempt at gathering views on trade and trade agreements from organizations across the world, looking at differences across continents is particularly interesting. Here we find greater optimism with respect to globalization in Africa and Asia; but also a greater desire to involve governments in economic policy especially in Africa.

We will further address these and many other questions in a series of publications that draw on the results from this survey.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate contacting us at tradepower@sbg.ac.at.