Policy Dilemmas for ASEAN Developing Countries Arising from the Tariff Moratorium on Electronically

The immediate issue is whether the moratorium should be made permanent, a proposal supported, for instance, by the Pathfinder group of countries in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).1 What is at stake making permanent the global moratorium for economies in the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia? The rest of the paper approaches the policy dilemmas involved in. [...] The method assumes that the historical growth (about a decade from the turn of the century) of the physical version of the imports extends into the most recent years. [...] This finding that the costs of the tariffs will be borne domestically is broadly consistent with the limited competition on the supply side of the kinds of goods in the ET grouping – goods from intellectual or the arts sectors and highly technical goods, such as software. [...] Wade (2017) associates the public denials of these interventions, which are parts of the normal political processes in the US, with conflicts with the ideology of ‘free markets.’ An outstanding recent example of industrial policy is the heavy subsidation of the semiconductor industry under the Biden Administration. [...] To this discussion we have presented two other issues of concern to developing countries: (1) the nature of and the manner by which international rules and disciplines emerge and (2) the nature of and the manner by which the tariff moratorium would impact industrial development aspirations of developing countries.