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What’s the effective rate of protection?
Tariffs on intermediate inputs vs final goods: Today I received some tax saving wisdom from a taxi driver in Ukraine. He told me that people who import cars to Ukraine sometimes cut the car in two...
View ArticleMost protectionist post-war action?
Fred Bergsten says: “China has intervened massively in the foreign exchange markets for at least five years, buying at least $1 billion every day to keep the dollar strong and its own renminbi weak…...
View ArticleCreative protectionism: Argentina requires firm-level balanced trade
The Economist describes some very unusual trade policies implemented by Argentina: Argentine manufacturers have been booming ever since the 2001 crash. Over most of that period, a cheap peso has...
View ArticlePakistan grants India MFN status
Pakistan has granted MFN status to India (with a list of excepted products). This accelerates liberalization between the two countries that had made some progress with the South Asian FTA (SAFTA)....
View ArticleUS abandons zeroing (for now?)
I’m seeing a lot of news about the US federal government dropping its practice of zeroing in calculating antidumping duties. The WTO news item is uninformative. I don’t have time this week to follow...
View ArticleThe structure of US trade barriers in two numbers
US apparel and footwear imports as a percentage of total US imports: 5% US apparel and footwear import duties as a percentage of total US import duties: 40% From the American Apparel and Footwear...
View ArticleRose: Protectionism is acyclical
Andrew Rose: Almost everyone agrees that protectionism is countercyclical; tariffs, quotas, and the like grow during recessions. The abstract of Bagwell and Staiger (2003) begins “Empirical studies...
View ArticleQuick links
My blogging has taken a back seat to my research recently. Here are some quick links that I wish I had more time to discuss: Gary Hufbauer & Jeff Schott: Will the WTO enjoy a bright future? (pdf)...
View ArticleTracking Trump’s trade policy
The start of the Trump administration means that trade policy is in the headlines far more than it has been for at least a decade. While the trade-policy blogosphere remains pretty quiet (partly...
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On the NYT’s “Building Trade Walls”
The Trump administration has certainly increased public discussion of trade policy. Yesterday, the New York Times ran a series of graphics accompanied by a thousand words on “Building Trade Walls” in...
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