Use of temporary trade barriers (TTBs) has proliferated across countries, industries, and even policy instruments. We construct a panel of bilateral, product-level US steel imports matched to a unique data set on trade policy exclusions associated with the 2002 US steel safeguard in order to...

The U.S. steel industry has a long history of being protected, first when it was an infant industry in 1791 and later as it became a mature industry and needed breathing room to allow it to restructure so that it could compete against more efficient foreign producers. In recent years the steel...

This paper examines the various arguments that have been put forth in favor of protectionism, from both an accounting and philosophical perspective. The author concludes that arguments against free trade are based on faulty premises, illogical reasoning or incorrect facts. Part 2. This paper was...

The stated purpose of the antidumping laws is to prevent unfair trade and to punish foreign producers for predatory pricing. The practical effect, however, is to prevent foreign producers from selling their products in a domestic market, even when pricing has not been abnormally low or...

This article is about protectionism. It is divided into four parts. Part 1 reviews the philosophy of protectionism, and analyzes the various arguments that have been given to support it over the years. These arguments have generally supported producers at the expense of the general public. Part...

The trade war initiated by the Trump administration is the largest since the US imposed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the 1930s and was still raging when he left office. We analyze how the trade war impacted the 2020 US Presidential election. Our results highlight the political salience of the...

A common narrative is that COVID-19 cost Trump re-election. We do not find supporting evidence; if anything, the pandemic helped Trump. However, we find substantial evidence that voters abandoned Trump in counties with large increases in health insurance coverage since the Affordable Care Act,...

The Trump Administration is proceeding with unilateral measures to address what it has characterized as “unfair” trade, risking retaliation, but banking on a threat of massive escalation to extract a favorable outcome for itself. Notwithstanding widespread speculation that the threats to...

In March 2002, the United States imposed temporary safeguard measures on 11 steel products in the forms of higher tariffs and tariff-rate quotas. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, we evaluate the effects of U.S. safeguards on economic welfare, real GDP, steel trade, and...