Tariff Pass-through Research Articles

Trade Elasticities in General Equilibrium: Demand, Supply, and Aggregation

Abstract We develop a general equilibrium model of international trade that incorporates imperfect factor mobility, product entry, and external returns to scale into a unified framework. The effects from these microeconomic channels can be summarized by two composite elasticities that govern supply and aggregation. We structurally derive export supply and import demand curves, develop a heteroskedastic estimator, and estimate supply, aggregation, and demand elasticities across international product markets. Employing our estimated model, we evaluate the impact of recent US protectionist policies and highlight the importance of our estimates and general equilibrium effects for tariff passthrough rates and cross-industry employment reallocations.

Retaliatory Tariffs of China during the Trade War: A Firm-level Overview

Abstract In this paper, we offer a comprehensive survey of the latest research regarding the pass-through of tariffs during the trade war between China and the United States, with an emphasis on the investigations conducted from the Chinese perspective. While one might anticipate symmetric effects on both the United States and China, these nations exhibit substantial disparities in terms of trade structure and policy. We underscore two salient concerns that have been largely neglected in extant literature: (1) the exemption of processing imports from retaliatory tariffs in China, which may engender biased estimations of pass-through at the product level, and (2) the heterogeneous distribution of retaliatory tariffs across product classifications, firm ownership structures, and geographical regions, necessitating more granular estimations at the firm level. Furthermore, we provide a detailed description of firm import tariffs, emphasizing the crucial role of tailored policies in mitigating the repercussions of the trade conflict.

Welfare Effects of Food Tariff Changes on Urban and Rural Households

This study aims to analyze the effects of food tariff changes on the welfare of urban and rural households in Iran. The study considers the role of households as consumers, producers, and workers, as well as the market structure over the past fifteen years. Firstly, the study estimated the consumption behavior for the main food groups using the QUAIDS and pseudo-panel data. Then, the extent of tariff pass-through to domestic food prices was determined, and after that, price-wage elasticity and wage changes as a result of tariff changes were estimated. Finally, it calculated the effect of tariff changes on household purchasing power and income through an indirect utility function to get welfare effects. The results indicate that tariff pass-through to food prices is incomplete and varies between urban and rural areas. The study has found that skilled labor is more sensitive to food tariff reductions than unskilled labor, particularly in rural areas. The results reveal that tariff changes positively affect urban households' welfare, while rural households experience a loss due to these changes. Urban areas benefit from reduced household expenditure, while food prices are increasing in rural areas due to weak or absent tariff pass-through. Although these increases favor producers, they do not compensate for the loss suffered by consumers, resulting in reduced welfare in rural areas. The findings show that the effects of tariff changes vary across regions, not only between urban and rural areas but also among different provinces. Furthermore, the tariff reductions have been a boon for consumers, but a bane for producers, ultimately harming production in the long term. The findings suggest that regional markets may be either sufficient or insufficient to convert pass-through-the-border prices into domestic prices. Therefore, policymakers can use this study as a useful guide to reform the regional market structure to raise household welfare, food security, and income inequality.

Tariff wars, unemployment, and top incomes

Motivated by the 2018–19 global tariff war, we develop a multi-country trade model with occupational choice, heterogeneous firms, and unemployment. The model features a complete tariff pass-through and positive optimal tariffs addressing product and labor-market distortions. The quantitative analysis of the model with four countries/regions shows that raising tariffs unilaterally by a country increases welfare but also raises unemployment and top incomes in that country, whereas having the opposite impact on tariff-targeted countries. A global tariff war reduces every country’s welfare, unemployment, and top-income inequality, whereas moving from a worldwide tariff war to free trade raises every country’s welfare, unemployment, and top-income inequality.

Import Tariff Pass-Through Effect and the Spatial Distribution of Domestic Consumer Goods Prices: Zimbabwe (2009 to 2019)

ABSTRACTThe study of import tariffs pass-through has been observed to be crucial for policymaking. The extant literature on import tariff pass-through effects has ignored the possibility of spatial dependence between domestic goods prices. This study proposes an extension of the traditional empirical model by controlling for the domestic spatial dependence of prices at the district level. The estimates rely on a district-level panel dataset of consumer goods for Zimbabwe. The spatial econometrics models used show positive spatial dependence of domestic goods prices. When compared to our modified model, the traditional import tariffs pass-through model was found to highly overestimate the import tariff pass-through effect.

Tariff pass-through and implications for domestic markets: Evidence from U.S. steel imports

Recent studies report that during the U.S. trade war, the overall burden of tariffs has entirely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers in terms of higher import prices, but the pass-through is incomplete in the case of steel products. Using 10-digit import data from U.S. Customs for 2018–2019, contrary to the recent literature, we find that import tariff pass-through is complete for steel products. We also find significant and large supply chain adjustments following the imposition of tariffs. However, despite the supply chain adjustments, the overall imports of steel products, which moved in tandem with domestic steel consumption over the last ten years, exhibited a declining trend. The overall steel imports declined from 34.5 in 2017 to 26.3 million metric tons in 2019. During the same period, domestic production increased from 81.6 to 87.9 million metric tons, almost equal to the peak production the U.S. achieved in 2012 and 2014.

Invoicing Currency and Symmetric Pass-Through of Exchange Rates and Tariffs: Evidence from Malawian Imports from the EU

The response of import prices to exchange rates can be used to predict the effect of changes in trade policy, as the symmetric hypothesis asserts that the effect of tariffs and exchange rates on prices are identical. This paper examines whether the hypothesis holds in the context of various invoicing currencies, using transaction-level data of Malawian imports from the European Union (EU). The findings show that the U.S. dollar has the highest invoicing share, and the pass-through of exchange rate and tariff shocks on importers is high, but not necessarily equal, when the currency of invoicing is considered. Crucially, the tariff pass-through to prices is higher than the exchange rate pass-through, with important differences across countries, currencies and sectors. Thus, in order to predict the effects of trade policy, bilateral exchange rates may not be suitable for capturing exchange rate pass-through for small developing countries, especially import-dependent ones such as Malawi.

Tariff Pass-Through and Implications for Domestic Markets: Evidence from U.S. Steel Imports

Tariff Pass-Through and Implications for Domestic Markets: Evidence from U.S. Steel Imports

Lerner meets Metzler: Tariff pass-through of worldwide trade

In this study, we quantify the worldwide tariff pass-through, that is, the impact of tariff reductions on trade prices. Some estimations show that a one-percentage-point reduction in tariffs decreases trade prices by approximately 0.1% (Lerner paradox). To determine the mechanism underlying this result, we decompose trade prices into product quality and quality-adjusted trade prices. We find that a one-percentage-point reduction in tariff rates decreases product quality by approximately 1.6% and increases quality-adjusted trade prices by approximately 1.5% (Metzler-like paradox in terms of quality-adjusted price). Thus, we construct a theoretical model to demonstrate the mechanism behind these empirical results. We suggest that both a firm-delocation mechanism under variable markups and a quality-sorting mechanism are the driving forces behind these empirical findings. Finally, we examine the welfare effect of tariff changes by employing this theoretical model. Despite the large decrease in trade prices, trade liberalization worsens consumer welfare.

Tariff Pass-through in Wholesaling: Evidence from Firm-level Data in Japan✰

Tariff pass-through is critical for considering the benefits of trade liberalization, the beneficiaries, and the extent. This study empirically examines the tariff pass-through in wholesaling through the wholesale firm-level data in Japan. In particular, the study focuses on wholesalers’ margin ratio, that is, (sales – procurements) / sales. We address the endogeneity concerns on the measurement errors of the study variables of margin ratio and tariffs. Consequently, the study found that importing wholesalers significantly raised their margin ratio against tariff reduction. On average, a 1 percentage point reduction of tariffs raised the margin ratio by approximately 0.25 percentage point. This rise is equivalent to that of sales prices to procurement prices by about 0.34 %, indicating that Japanese wholesalers capture one-third of the tariff rent. However, the study also found that a tariff reduction lowers the margin ratio of wholesalers who procure their products from domestic producers.

Government policies in a granular global economy

Using a granular model of international trade, we study the rationale and implications of various government interventions targeted at large individual firms. In antitrust regulation, governments face an incentive to be overly lenient towards domestic mergers in comparative advantage sectors. In trade policy, targeting individual foreign exporters rather than entire sectors minimizes the pass-through of import tariffs into domestic consumer prices, shifting the burden towards foreign producers. In industrial policy, subsidizing ‘national champions’ is generally suboptimal in closed economies as it leads to an excessive build-up of market power, yet it may become unilaterally welfare improving in open economies at the cost of the foreign consumers.

Tariff Pass-Through at the Border and at the Store: Evidence from US Trade Policy

We use microdata collected at the border and the store to characterize the price impact of recent US trade policy on importers, exporters, and consumers. At the border, import tariff pass-through is much higher than exchange rate pass-through. Chinese exporters did not lower their dollar prices by much, despite the recent appreciation of the dollar. By contrast, US exporters significantly lowered prices affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs. In US stores, the price impact is more limited, suggesting that retail margins have fallen. Our results imply that, so far, the tariffs’ incidence has fallen in large part on US firms. (JEL E31, F13, F14, F31, L11)

Government Policies in a Granular Global Economy

We use the granular model of international trade developed in Gaubert and Itskhoki (2020) to study the rationale and implications of three types of government interventions typically targeted at large individual firms -- antitrust, trade and industrial policies. We find that in antitrust regulation, governments face an incentive to be overly lenient in accepting mergers of large domestic firms, which acts akin to beggar-thy-neighbor trade policy in sectors with strong comparative advantage. In trade policy, targeting large individual foreign exporters rather than entire sectors is desirable from the point of view of a national government. Doing so minimizes the pass-through of import tariffs into domestic consumer prices, placing a greater portion of the burden on foreign producers. Finally, we show that subsidizing `national champions' is generally suboptimal in closed economies as it leads to an excessive build-up of market power, but it may become unilaterally welfare improving in open economies. We contrast unilaterally optimal policies with the coordinated global optimal policy and emphasize the need for international policy cooperation in these domains.

Phase out tariffs, phase in trade?

An important stylized fact in the empirical Free Trade Agreement (FTA) literature is that member trade flows gradually increase over time following an FTA. Baier and Bergstrand (2007) suggest two explanations: tariff phase-out and delayed pass-through of tariffs into import prices. We examine these hypotheses using 1989–2016 U.S. import growth and product-level data on the tariff phase-out negotiated under NAFTA and the earlier Canada-U.S. FTA. We do not find evidence supporting either hypothesis. While products receiving tariff cuts do show delayed import growth relative to products with unchanged tariffs, the delay in import growth does not correspond to delays in the timing of tariff cuts. We also show that tariff cuts are fully and immediately passed through to U.S. importers as there are virtually no changes in the prices received by exporters either in the short run or the long run. Rather, we find evidence for an important role played by NAFTA tariff cuts reducing the impact of frictions that, in turn, allow for a spatial expansion of imports across the U.S.

Who’s Paying for the US Tariffs? A Longer-Term Perspective

Using another year of data including significant escalations in the trade war, we find that the costs of the US tariffs continue to be almost entirely borne by US firms and consumers. We show that the response of import values to the tariffs increases in absolute magnitude over time, consistent with the idea that it takes time for firms to reorganize supply chains. We find heterogeneity in the responses of some sectors, such as steel, where tariffs have caused foreign exporters to drop their prices substantially, enabling them to export relatively more than in sectors where tariff pass-through was complete.

The Impacts of the U.S. Trade War on Chinese Exporters

This paper studies the impacts of the 2018 U.S. tariff surges on export prices and adjustments of sales across different markets of Chinese exporters. The complete tariff passthrough result is robust to controlling for firm-related fixed effects. While firms’ exports to the U.S. dropped significantly, exports to the E.U. increased moderately, and domestic sales or exports to other foreign markets barely adjusted. We provide evidence that product standard requirements served as a barrier to firms’ adjustments of sales. Finally, by surveying managers of exporting firms, we shed light on potential impediments to firms’ adjustments of export prices and sales.

The Return to Protectionism*

AbstractAfter decades of supporting free trade, in 2018 the United States raised import tariffs and major trade partners retaliated. We analyze the short-run impact of this return to protectionism on the U.S. economy. Import and retaliatory tariffs caused large declines in imports and exports. Prices of imports targeted by tariffs did not fall, implying complete pass-through of tariffs to duty-inclusive prices. The resulting losses to U.S. consumers and firms that buy imports was $51 billion, or 0.27% of GDP. We embed the estimated trade elasticities in a general-equilibrium model of the U.S. economy. After accounting for tariff revenue and gains to domestic producers, the aggregate real income loss was $7.2 billion, or 0.04% of GDP. Import tariffs favored sectors concentrated in politically competitive counties, and the model implies that tradeable-sector workers in heavily Republican counties were the most negatively affected due to the retaliatory tariffs. JEL Code: F1.

Tariff Passthrough at the Border

We use micro data collected at the border and at retailers to characterize the effects brought by recent changes in US trade policy - particularly the tariffs placed on imports from China - on importers, consumers, and exporters. We start by documenting that the tariffs were almost fully passed through to total prices paid by importers, suggesting the tariffs' incidence has fallen largely on the United States. Since we estimate the response of prices to exchange rates to be far more muted, the recent depreciation of the Chinese renminbi is unlikely to alter this conclusion. Next, using product-level data from several large multi-national retailers, we demonstrate that the impact of the tariffs on retail prices is more mixed. Some affected product categories have seen sharp price increases, but the difference between affected and unaffected products is generally quite modest, suggesting that retail margins have fallen. These retailers' imports increased after the initial announcement of possible tariffs, but before their full implementation, so the intermediate passthrough of tariffs to their prices may not persist. Finally, in contrast to the case of foreign exporters facing US tariffs, we show that US exporters lowered their prices on goods subjected to foreign retaliatory tariffs compared to exports of non-targeted goods.

Safeguard Duty Imposition Impacting Solar Tariffs in India

By 2022, Government of India targets to install 175 GW of renewable energy in the country among which solar energy shall contribute 100 GW. This paper, discusses the impact of the important decision taken by Government of India with regards to the levy of Safeguard Duty (SGD) on solar photovoltaic panels and cells imported into the country. This paper analyses the impact on the capital cost of the solar projects on account of the imposition of SGD and the mechanism to be adopted under the Change in Law provision under the Power Purchase Agreements (PPA’s) for restoring the Solar Power Developers (SPD’s) to the same economic position as prior to imposition of SGD. A methodology has been proposed to derive a normative tariff pass-through based on parameters considered in CERC RE Tariff Order, which can be made applicable to all projects which are reeling under the impact of SGD to recover the impact on the capital cost of the project. Further, an analysis to determine the required pass through in tariff on account of SGD based on normative project cost values which can be made applicable to all affected solar projects has been carried out. Upon consideration of the different project parameters and cost structures for various projects and an early resolution of the issue to reduce the burden on the SPD’s, it is deduced that pass through in tariff based on normative project cost values remains the best option for all stakeholders concerned. This work will be particularly applicable for projects which were already bid out prior to the date of SGD initiation, and were under construction or where construction was about to commence, and hence would be impacted by applicable SGD. Since the impact of imposition of SGD is still being analyzed, this may be one of the first papers and result in setting up of precedent for future papers & numerous case studies revolving around a specific solar power project.

The macroeconomic effects of trade tariffs: Revisiting the Lerner symmetry result

We study the robustness of the Lerner symmetry result in an open economy New Keynesian model with price rigidities. While the Lerner symmetry result, i.e. the absence of allocative and trade-flow effects of an equally-sized change in import tariff and export subsidy, holds up approximately for a number of alternative assumptions, we obtain quantitatively important long-term deviations under complete international asset markets. Direct pass-through of tariffs and subsidies to prices and slow exchange rate adjustment can also generate significant short-term deviations from Lerner. Deviations from symmetry, however, do not necessarily imply an impact on global output and are often limited to a redistribution of production and consumption across countries. Finally, we quantify the macroeconomic costs of a trade war and find that they can be substantial, with permanently lower income and trade volumes. However, a fully symmetric retaliation to an unilaterally imposed border adjustment tax can prevent any sizable adverse real or nominal effects.