Customs Unions

A Customs Union is generally defined as a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area with a common external tariff. Customs unions are established through trade pacts where the participant countries set up common external trade policy. Common competition policy is also helpful to avoid competition deficiency.

Purposes for establishing a customs union normally include increasing economic efficiency and establishing closer political and cultural ties between the member countries. It is the third stage of economic integration. Every economic union, customs and monetary union and economic and monetary union includes a customs union.

The purpose of a customs union is to make it easier for member countries to trade freely with each other. The union reduces the administrative and financial burden of barrier trading and fosters economic cooperation among nations.

However, member countries do not enjoy the liberty to form their own trade deals. The countries in the customs union usually restructure their domestic economy and economic policies in order to maximize their gain from membership in the union. The European Union is the largest customs union in the world in terms of the economic output of its members.

A customs union generates trade creation and diversion that helps with economic integration. Below are the advantages and disadvantages of customs unions.

Meaning

It avoids the problem that the free trade zone needs to be supplemented by the principle of origin to maintain the normal flow of commodities. Here, instead of the principle of origin, a common ‘foreign barrier’ is built. In this sense, the customs union is more exclusive than the free trade zone.

It makes the ‘national sovereignty’ of the member countries to be transferred to the economic integration organization to a greater extent, so that once a country joins a customs union, it loses its right to autonomous tariffs. In reality, the more typical customs union is the European Economic Community established in 1958.

Main feature

The main feature of the Customs Union is that the member countries have not only eliminated trade barriers and implemented free trade, but also established a common external tariff. In other words, in addition to agreeing to eliminate each other ‘s trade barriers, members of the Customs Union also adopt common external tariff and trade policies. GATT stipulates that if the customs union is not established immediately, but is gradually completed over a period of time, it should be completed within a reasonable period, which generally does not exceed 10 years.

Protect measures

The exclusive protection measures of the Customs Union mainly include the following:

• Reduce tariffs until the tariffs within the union are cancelled. In order to achieve this goal, the alliance often stipulates that the member countries must transition from their current external tariff rates to the unified tariff rates stipulated by the alliance in stages within a certain period of time, until finally canceling tariff.
• Formulate a unified foreign trade policy and foreign tariff rates. In terms of foreign affairs, allied members must increase or decrease their original foreign tariff rates within the prescribed time, and eventually establish a common external tariff rate; and gradually unify their foreign trade policies, such as foreign discrimination policies and import quantities.
• For goods imported from outside the alliance, common different tariffs are levied, such as preferential tax rates, agreed national tax rates, most-favored nation tax rates, ordinary preferential tax rates, and ordinary tax rates, according to the types of commodities and the provider countries.
• Formulate unified protective measures, such as import quotas, health and epidemic prevention standards, etc.

Advantages of Custom Unions

1. Increase in trade flows and economic integration

The main effect of a free-trade agreement is that it increases trade between member countries. It helps improve the allocation of scarce resources that satisfy the wants and needs of consumers and boosts foreign direct investment (FDI).

Customs unions lead to better economic integration and political cooperation between nations and the creation of a common market, monetary union, and fiscal union.

2. Trade creation and trade diversion

The effectiveness of a customs union is measured in terms of trade creation and trade diversion. Trade creation occurs when the more efficient members of the union sell to less efficient members, leading to a better allocation of resources.

Trade diversion occurs when efficient non-member countries sell fewer goods to member countries because of external tariffs. It gives less efficient countries in the union the opportunity to capitalize on their position and sell more goods within the union.

If the gains from trade creation exceed the losses from trade diversion, that leads to increased economic welfare among member countries.

3. Reduces trade deflection

One of the main reasons a customs union is favored over a free trade agreement is because the former solves the problem of trade deflection. This occurs when a non-member country sells its goods to a low-tariff FTA (free trade agreement) country, which then resells to a high-tariff FTA country, leading to trade distortions. The presence of a common external tariff in customs unions helps avoid problems that arise from tariff differentials.

Disadvantages of Customs Unions

1. Loss of economic sovereignty

Members of a customs union are required to negotiate with non-member countries and organizations such as the WTO. This is necessary to maintain a customs union; however, it also means that individual member countries are not free to negotiate their own deals.

If a country wants to protect an infant industry in its market, it is unable to do so by imposing tariffs or other protective barriers due to the liberal trading policies. Similarly, if a country wants to liberalize its trade outside the union, it is unable to do this due to the common external tariff.

2. Distribution of tariff revenues

Some countries in the union do not receive a fair share of tariff revenues. This is common among countries like the UK that trade relatively more with countries outside the union. Around 20%-25% of the tariff revenue is retained by the member who collects the revenue. It is estimated that the cost of collecting this revenue exceeds the actual revenue collected.

3. Complexity of setting the tariff rate

A common problem faced by customs unions is the complexity of setting the applicable tariff rate. The process is very costly and time-consuming. Member countries often find it hard to forgo the trade of certain goods or services because another country in the union is producing it more efficiently. The problem is usually faced by developing countries and is a major issue that the UK is dealing with during Brexit.

Economic Effects

The Customs Union started in Europe and is one of the organizational forms of economic integration. The customs union has two economic effects, static effects and dynamic effects.

Static effect

There are trade creation effects and trade diversion effects. The trade creation effect refers to the benefits generated by products from domestic production with higher production costs to the production of customs union countries with lower costs. The trade diversion effect refers to the loss incurred when a product is imported from a non-member country with lower production costs to a member country with a higher cost. This is the price of joining the customs union. When the trade creation effect is greater than the transfer effect, the combined effect of joining the Customs Union on the member countries is net profit, which means an increase in the economic welfare level of the member countries; otherwise, it is a net loss and a decline in the economic welfare level.

The trade creation effect is usually regarded as a positive effect. This is because the domestic production cost of country A is higher than the production cost of country A ‘s imports from country B. The Customs Union made Country A give up the domestic production of some commodities and change it to Country B to produce these commodities. From a worldwide perspective, this kind of production conversion improves the efficiency of resource allocation.

Dynamic effect

The customs union will not only bring static effects to member states, but also bring some dynamic effects to them. Sometimes, this dynamic effect is more important than its static effect, which has an important impact on the economic growth of member countries.

• The first dynamic effect of the customs union is the large market effect (or economies of scale effect). After the establishment of the customs union, good conditions have been created for the mutual export of products between member countries. This expansion of the market has promoted the development of enterprise production, allowing producers to continuously expand production scale, reduce costs, enjoy the benefits of economies of scale, and can further enhance the externality of enterprises within the alliance, especially for non-member company’s competitive power. Therefore, the large market effect created by the Customs Union has triggered the realization of economies of scale.
• The establishment of the Customs Union has promoted competition among enterprises among member countries. Before the member states formed a customs union, many sectors had formed domestic monopolies, and several enterprises had occupied the domestic market for a long time and obtained excessive monopoly profits. Therefore, it is not conducive to the resource allocation and technological progress of various countries. After the formation of the customs union, due to the mutual openness of the markets of various countries, enterprises of various countries face competition from similar enterprises in other member countries. As a result, in order to gain a favorable position in the competition, enterprises will inevitably increase research and development investment and continuously reduce production costs, thereby creating a strong competitive atmosphere within the alliance, improving economic efficiency, and promoting technological progress.
• The establishment of a customs union helps to attract external investment. The establishment of a customs union implies the exclusion of products from non-members. In order to counteract such adverse effects, countries outside the alliance may transfer enterprises to some countries within the customs union to directly produce and sell locally in order to bypass uniform tariff and non-tariff barriers. This objectively generates capital inflows that accompany the transfer of production, attracting large amounts of foreign direct investment.