Zusammenfassung:
We study the optimal trade policy against a foreign oligopoly withendogenous quality. We show that, under the Most Favoured Nation(MFN) clause, a uniform tariff policy is always welfare improvingover the free trade equilibrium. However, a nonuniform tariff policyis always desirable on welfare grounds. First best policy typicallyconsists of setting a subsidy on the low-quality product and a tax onhigh-quality one. Another example of such a nonuniform tariff policyis a Regional Trade Agreement (RTA). We show that, if a welfareimprovement is possible through a RTA, it is always with the low-quality producing country that it has to be achieved.