From the Editor

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the fourth issue of The International Trade Journal (ITJ)’s thirty-eight volume. The articles in this issue focus on trade in food, drink, and agricultural goods. The first article looks at how anti-dumping duties affected shrimp imports into the United States (US). The second article looks at how remittances of food affect food insecurity in Ghana. The final two articles focus on trade in alcoholic drinks, with the third article examining US whiskey and the final article looking at Uruguayan wine.

The first article in this issue, by Akbar Marvasti, looks at the effect of anti-dumping duties imposed on shrimp imports into the US.¹ In 2005, the US imposed antidumping duties on shrimp imports from six large producers (Brazil, China, Ecuador, India, Thailand, and Vietnam). The duties caused a drop in these countries’ exports to the US. They did not, however, result in lower total exports to the US because countries not covered by the anti-dumping duties responded by increasing their exports. The author also found that the pass-through rate was small, suggesting the anti-dumping duties did not significantly lower consumer welfare.

The second article, by Josephine Baako-Amponsah, Samuel Kobina Annim, and Camera Kwasi Obeng, looks at how remittances of food affect food security in Ghana. Using propensity score matching and instrumental variable regression models, the authors show that food remittances reduce food insecurity among urban and, especially, rural households in Ghana. Moreover, they find that food remittances have a more robust impact on food insecurity than cash remittances.

The third article, by Andrew Muhammad and Jada Thompson, examines how retaliatory tariffs affected US whiskey exports into the United Kingdom (UK). The value of US exports to the UK fell by over 30% in 2019, after the European Union (EU) imposed a 25% retaliatory tariff on US whiskey. The authors projected that exports would fully recover after the retaliatory tariffs were removed following Brexit.²

The final article, by Yasuo Nishiyama and Angelo A. Camillo, also studies trade in alcoholic beverages, focusing on Uruguayan wine exports. It asks whether Uruguay followed the same strategy in the early 2000s that Chile had successfully followed in the 1980s, in terms of quality improvements and price increases. They find that Uruguay did so only partially. The quality of Uruguayan wines improved after it entered international markets, mimicking the strategy that Chile had taken earlier as Chile moved from selling low to high quality wines. In contrast to Chile, however, Uruguay did not increase prices as it improved quality; Uruguayan wines entered international markets at relatively high prices, which were maintained as quality improved.

As usual, we would like to thank the people without whom the ITJ would not succeed. These include the authors who contribute their articles, the anonymous referees who give detailed and timely comments, the team at the International Trade Institute at Texas A&M International University (TAMIU) who process submissions quickly and efficiently, our Editorial Board who guide the journal, and our publisher, Taylor and Francis, who ensures the ITJ keeps its high standards.

Notes

¹ Several recent studies in the ITJ have looked at antidumping duties (Bienen, Ciuriak, and Picarello 2014; Choi and Kim 2014; Firme and Vasconcelos 2020; Lourenco et al. 2023; Nizovtsev and Skiba 2016). Most notably, Hai (2020) looked at the effect of anti-dumping duties on Vietnamese shrimp exports to the United States.

² In June 2022, the tariffs were removed (Swanson 2022). This was after the end of the study period.