Inconsistent Search Results
Users may experience issues with the search function. We encourage you to browse our pages manually through the navigation until this is resolved. Thank you for your patience.

Rising Import Tariffs, Falling Export Growth: When Modern Supply Chains Meet Old-Style Protectionism

Written by:
Working Paper Number: CES-20-01

Abstract

We examine the impacts of the 2018-2019 U.S. import tariff increases on U.S. export growth through the lens of supply chain linkages. Using 2016 confidential firm-trade linked data, we document the implied incidence and scope of new import tariffs. Firms that eventually faced tariff increases on their imports accounted for 84% of all exports and represented 65% of manufacturing employment. For all affected firms, the implied cost is $900 per worker in new duties. To estimate the effect on U.S. export growth, we construct product-level measures of import tariff exposure of U.S. exports from the underlying firm micro data. More exposed products experienced 2 percentage point lower growth relative to products with no exposure. The decline in exports is equivalent to an ad valorem tariff on U.S. exports of almost 2% for the typical product and almost 4% for products with higher than average exposure.

Page Last Revised - October 8, 2021