Agricultural Economics Department
Date of this Version
11-2014
Citation
Beghin, John C., Jean-Christophe Bureau, and Alexandre Gohin. November 2014. The impact of an EU-US transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement on biofuel and feedstock markets. Working Paper No. 14024. Center for Agricultural and Rural Development. Iowa State University, Department of Economics, Ames, Iowa.
Abstract
We assess the impact of a potential TTIP bilateral free trade agreement on the EU and US bio-economies (feedstock, biofuels, by-products, and related competing crops) and major trade partners in these markets. The analysis develops a multi-market model that incorporates bilateral trade flows (US to EU, EU to US, and similarly with third countries) and is calibrated to OECD-FAO baseline for 2013–2022 to account for recent policy decisions. The major policy reforms from a TTIP involve tariff and TRQ liberalization and their direct contractionary impact on US sugar supply, EU biofuel production, and indirect negative effect on US HFCS production. EU sugar and isoglucose productions expand along with US ethanol and biodiesel and oilseed crushing. EU sugar would flow to the US, US biofuels and vegetable oil to the EU. We further quantify nontariff measures (NTM) affecting these trade flows between the EU and the US. EU oilseed production contracts, and EU crushing expands with improving crushing margins following reduced NTM frictions. Our analysis reveals limited net welfare gains with most net benefits reaped by Brazil and not the two trading partners of the TTIP.
Comments
Published in Journal of Agricultural Economics 68:2 (June 2017), pp. 321-344.
doi: 10.1111/1477-9552.12200
Copyright © 2016 The Agricultural Economics Society. Published by Wiley. Used by permission.