Fact of the Week: New US Import Tariffs Have Cost Affected Firms an Average of $900 Per Worker

Source: Kyle Handley, Fariha Kamal, and Ryan Monarch, “Rising Import Tariffs, Falling Export Growth: When Modern Supply Chains Meet Old-Style Protectionism,” NBER Working Paper No. 26611, January 2020.

Commentary: The United States imposed tariffs on $290 billion of imports in 2018 and 2019, with an average tariff increase of 24 percent. A new study has quantified the impact of this on the U.S. economy, finding that firms facing increased import costs accounted for 84 percent of U.S. exports in those years and 65 percent of U.S. manufacturing employment. These firms lost an average of $900 in revenue per worker, while exports of products exposed to import tariffs fell by 2 percent.