How much has the US-China tariff war impacted economic outcomes in China? We address this question using high-frequency night lights data, together with measures of the trade exposure of fine grid locations constructed from Chinese firms' geo-coordinates. Exploiting within-grid variation over...

This paper examines the political economy of U.S. trade policy around the time of the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930, a period when policy was unconstrained by trade agreements. We consider a model of politically-optimal trade policy for a large country that can influence its terms of trade and...

We document the outbreak of a trade war after the U.S. adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested the possible implementation of the sweeping tariff legislation, with many eventually choosing to retaliate by increasing their tariffs on imports from the...

We study empirically and theoretically the dynamic effects of the unilateral reduction in import tariffs undertaken by Colombia from 1989-1993, with a particular emphasis on the transition and including any anticipation effects. We develop an asymmetric two-country, multi-sector heterogeneous...

Import tariffs tend to be higher for final goods than for inputs, a phenomenon commonly referred to as tariff escalation. Yet neoclassical trade theory - and modern Ricardian trade models, in particular - predict that welfare-maximizing tariffs are uniform across sectors. We show that tariff...

This paper uses a new dataset on the universe of Canadian imports and tariffs between 1924 and 1936, disaggregated into 1697 goods originating in 112 countries, to analyze the impact on Canadian imports of interwar Canadian trade policy, including the 1932 Ottawa trade agreements. Rather than...

We study the economic and political consequences of the 2018-2019 trade war between the United States, China and other US trade partners at the detailed geographic level, exploiting measures of local exposure to US import tariffs, foreign retaliatory tariffs, and US compensation programs. The...

Section 321 of the 1930 Tariff Act allows up to $800 in imports per person per day to enter the US duty-free and with minimal customs requirements. Fueled by rising direct-to-consumer trade, these "de minimis" shipments have exploded yet are not recorded in Census trade data. Who benefits from...