기업을 위한 무역조정지원제도의 개선방안

Abstract

The trade adjustment assistance for firms was firstly introduced to help the firms and workers who suffered from the injury or the threat of injury in the course of implementing the Free Trade Agreements in Korea in April, 2007. Faced with the much more expended trade liberalization resulted from the FTAs with the big three economies such as the United States, the European Union and China, the needs for the trade adjustment assistance is expected to increase significantly. For the effective trade adjustment assistance for firms, it is necessary to examine the current system based on the experience of the United States of which the trade adjustment assistance has a more than 50 years of operation. Based on the comparative study on the trade adjustment assistance system between the U.S. and Korea, the ideas for the improvement of the Korean system are suggested as followings: First, the policy objective and orientation of the trade adjustment assistance should be transformed towards increasing the competitiveness of the firms, making it possible to trade adjustment through an effective allocation of resources and ultimately integrating the interests of protecting jobs. Second, the consulting service provided from the petition to the monitoring of the business recovery plan should be customized reflecting the actual needs of the firms and it is necessary to be enhanced by an expended pool of experts at the national and regional level. Third, the procedural effectiveness and the speed to deal with the petitions have to be improved for the firms such as the simplification of the documents, the one-stop service by trade adjustment center, etc. Fourth, the monitoring should be done in a way to check the status of the firms which were designated as the trade adjustment assistance firms and to examine the effective allocation of resources provided by the system for offering the best policy options to the firms. Fifth, the compatibility of the trade adjustment assistance (both in the form and contents) with the WTO Agreement, in particular, the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures should be monitored. And lastly, the promotion of the system should be made through various on-line and off line channels so as to help the firms benefit from the system at an optimal timing for them and the consulting cases, regardless of whether they are successful or unsuccessful, should be collected and shared to elaborate better consulting resources.