Adeel Malik, Christian Ruckteschler, and Ferdinand Eibl write for Brookings: Developing countries have been liberalizing their trade since the late 1980s. The establishment of World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and the subsequent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) furthered this trend. As a result, applied tariff rates have fallen by 66 percent since 1996. However, such tariff liberalization has not always translated into lower trade protection in developing countries. A key reason for this is that the fall in tariffs has been typically accompanied by an increase in nontariff measures (NTMs), such as policies and regulations that constrain imports.
go to the Brookings website: Crony globalization: How political cronies captured trade liberalization in Morocco (brookings.edu)
