Legislated Protection and the WTO

Tariff bindings and administered protection are two characteristics of the WTO that are little understood. Tariff bindings place a ceiling on tariffs that is not always reached, while administered protection ensures that all sectors have access to some minimum import protection, effectively creating a floor for protection. How do these policies affect applied MFN tariff rates that are enacted through the legislature? More specifically, can these policies embolden legislatures to enact lower applied tariffs? I address this question using a model of tariffs determined by a dynamic legislative process. I show existence of a set of symmetric Markov perfect equilibria in which a low level of protection is a possible outcome, and show that it is more difficult to achieve this outcome with tariff bindings and easier to achieve with administered protection, than it is under purely legislated protection.