"A poor trade-off": Mitra article in The Indian Express
An article written by Professor Devashish Mitra about how India may
lose more than it gains by staying out of WTO talks on tariff
liberalization was recently published in The Indian Express.
Mitra argues that "India should keep liberalizing its trade regime
through the multilateral mechanism of the WTO as well as unilaterally.
When the government talks about benefits from trade protection in
certain industries, it is referring to the benefits to producers of
those goods, but this at the cost of producers in other industries using
those products as inputs as well as consumers. Once you factor in the
welfare impact on these groups, basic international trade theory shows
that the arguments made about the losses from liberalization are
flawed." 02/06/13