From a new NBER working paper by Raphael Auer, Barthélémy Bonadio, and Andrei A. Levchenko
Abstract:
We provide a quantitative assessment of both the aggregate and the distributional effects of revoking NAFTA using a multi-country, multi-sector, multi-factor model of world production and trade with global input-output linkages. Revoking NAFTA would reduce US welfare by about 0.2%, and Canadian and Mexican welfare by about 2%. The distributional impacts of revoking NAFTA across workers in different sectors are an order of magnitude larger in all three countries, ranging from -2.7 to 2.26% in the United States. We combine the quantitative results with information on the geographic distribution of sectoral employment, and compute average real wage changes in each US congressional district, Mexican state, and Canadian province. We then examine the political correlates of the economic effects. Congressional district-level real wage changes are negatively correlated with the Trump vote share in 2016: districts that voted more for Trump would on average experience greater real wage reductions if NAFTA is revoked.
Gated version here.
From the just-released Fall 2018 issue of Cato Journal: James Dorn memorializes Leland Yeager, a member of the Virginia School of Political Economy.
Abstract:
In this memorial essay, I wish to paint a picture of Leland as a “market grandmaster,” in the sense of his keen understanding of markets and prices along with the role of money in facilitating exchange, and the importance of property rights in shaping incentives and behavior. Along with James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, Ronald Coase, G. Warren Nutter, Roland McKean, and others, he was an important member of the Virginia School of Political Economy.
"A country is far more likely to run a trade deficit when its economy is booming and personal consumption is high," writes Daniel Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, in The Washington Post. "If Trump really wanted to shrink the trade deficit, he would push to revoke his own tax bill. But he really does not want to do this."
From Reason.com: America's Trade Deficit Is Still Growing -- And that's just fine
You will find more infographics at Statista
You will find more infographics at Statista
From a working paper by Arnaud Costinot and Andrés Rodríguez-Clare:
Abstract:
About 8 cents out of every dollar spent in the United States is spent on
imports. What if, because of a wall or some other extreme policy
intervention, imports were to remain on the other side of the US border?
How much would US consumers be willing to pay to prevent this
hypothetical policy change from taking place? The answer to this
question represents the welfare cost from autarky or, equivalently, the
welfare gains from trade. In this article, we discuss how to evaluate
these gains using the demand for foreign factor services. The estimates
of gains from trade for the US economy that we review range from 2 to 8
percent of GDP.
A less technical overview is presented in the NBER Digest from April 2018
You will find more infographics at Statista
You will find more infographics at Statista
You will find more infographics at Statista
A new working paper by Shushanik Hakobyan and John McLaren.
Abstract:
Using US Census data for 1990-2000, we estimate effects of NAFTA on US wages, focusing on differences by gender. We find that NAFTA tariff reductions are associated with substantially reduced wage growth for married blue-collar women, much larger than the effect for other demographic groups. We investigate several possible explanations for this finding. It is not explained by differential sensitivity of female-dominated occupations to trade shocks, or by household bargaining that makes married women workers less able to change their industry of employment than other workers. We find some support for an explanation based on an equilibrium theory of selective non-participation in the labor market, whereby some of the higher-wage married women workers in their industry drop out of the labor market in response to their industry's loss of tariff. However, this does not fully explain the findings so we are left with a puzzle.
Gated edition of the paper is here.
A recent IMF paper by Diego A. Cerdeiro and Andras Komaromi "Trade and Income in the Long Run: Are There Really Gains, and Are They Widely Shared?" tackles big questions about income and income inequality related to trade.
Abstract
In the cross-section of countries, there is a strong positive correlation between trade and income, and a negative relationship between trade and inequality. Does this reflect a causal relationship? We adopt the Frankel and Romer (1999) identification strategy and exploit countries' exogenous geographic characteristics to estimate the causal effect of trade on income and inequality. Our cross-country estimates for trade's impact on real income are consistently positive and significant over time. At the same time, we do not find any statistical evidence that more trade increases aggregate measures of income inequality. Heeding previous concerns in the literature (e.g. Rodriguez and Rodrik, 2001; Rodrik, Subramanian and Trebbi, 2004), we carefully analyze the validity of our geography-based instrument, and confirm that the IV estimates for the impact of trade are not driven by other direct or indirect effects of geography through non-trade channels.
Another formidable paper by the noted economist David Autor, David Dorn and Gordon Hanson: "When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage Market Value of Young Men."
Abstract:
We exploit the gender-specific components of large-scale labor demand shocks stemming from rising international manufacturing competition to test how shifts in the relative economic stature of young men versus young women affected marriage, fertility and children’s living circumstances during 1990-2014. On average, trade shocks differentially reduce employment and earnings, raise the prevalence of idleness, and elevate premature mortality among young males. Consistent with Becker’s model of household specialization, shocks to male relative stature reduce marriage and fertility. Consistent with sociological accounts, these shocks raise the share of mothers who are unwed and share of children living in below-poverty, single-headed households.
Hat tip to David Warsh over at Economic Principals.
Reprinted from the Foundation for Economic Education
We Don't Need Steel Tariffs for National Security
The Financial Times reports that the Trump administration is considering steel tariffs:
The US has set the stage for a global showdown over steel, launching a national security investigation that could lead to sweeping tariffs on steel imports in what would be the first significant act of economic protectionism by President Donald Trump.
The decision to use a 1962 law allowing the US government to limit imports that threaten its security readiness is intended to deliver on Mr Trump's campaign promises to bolster heavy industry and "put new American steel into the spine of this country", officials said on Thursday.
A few observations:
1. Congress erred in delegating to the executive branch the power to set national security tariffs. Almost any industry could be deemed essential for "national security."
2. The US steel industry currently produces about 80 million tons per year. That's more than enough to meet our essential military needs. And this doesn't even account for the fact that steel production could be increased, as we are not operating at capacity. Yes, it might take a bit of time to bring mothballed plants back online, but as the following quotation suggests, new weapons now take far longer to develop than they did back in WWII:
Civilian manufacturing capacity is now ALMOST ENTIRELY USELESS for defense purposes. Whereas in WWII, auto assembly lines could be used to make planes & tanks, and Singer made guns instead of sewing machines... Now all but the most basic defense products (personal firearms, sewing of uniforms, etc) must be made by specialized expert-firms. Super-weapons such as the F-22/F-35, M1A3 Abrams (it's under development now), and whatever we make when we finally field a next-generation artillery piece (cancelling the Crusader was a mistake, btw) require such a specialized knowledge-base & facilities, that they MUST be made by a dedicated defense industry - something we have (on a best-in-the-world level). Re-purposing a factory that built 2-ton SUVs to build 70-ton tanks just isn't happening. Even if it could, how much experience does your average auto-worker have in assembling uranium-ceramic-steel-composite armor properly, so as to maintain it's ability to take 125mm KE hits?
A final point on this issue, is that modern war moves too fast to 'develop and manufacture new products after the fact, using civilian industries'. It's a 'run what ya brung' sort of affair
And this doesn't even account for the fact that the US would likely have access to steel produced in friendly countries such as Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Germany. Sure, one could construct scenarios where some of that steel is cut off in a war (i.e., Japanese exports are disrupted by a war with China, or German exports in a war with Russia), but unless the US is fighting the entire world at once, we'd surely have access to at least some markets. And if steel imports really were cut off, where would we get our iron ore? Today we don't need much iron because of our use of scrap metal. But if we stopped building cars during a war, then far less scrap metal would be available. This also fails to account for the fact that warfare in the modern world tends to be asymmetric. The threat of nuclear annihilation means that we fight small countries, not large nuclear powers.
The development of missile technology tends to make steel-intensive weapons (such as ships and tanks) more of a "sitting duck" than in the old days. I recall that a single Argentine missile took out a British destroyer in the Falklands War--and that was way back in 1983. Think about today's cruise missiles, and also consider that the sort of powerful adversary that would require the US to have a massive steel industry would be far more militarily advanced than Argentina in 1983. I'm not expert on modern weapons, but I'd wager that in today's warfare a big steel industry is less important than back in WWII.
If steel prices rise, other American manufacturers (cars, white goods, etc.) would be put at a competitive disadvantage to imports.
3. One possibility is that the national security argument is simply being used as an excuse to save jobs in the steel industry. As an analogy, recall that when Trump campaigned for President he promised to ban Muslim immigration. When Rudy Giuliani told him that this was a legally dubious proposal, Trump asked for a version of the plan that would be accepted by the courts. This led to the recent dispute over the ban on immigration from seven (later six) majority Muslim countries.
I don't have strong views either way on whether Trump's immigration ban was legal. But I will say that the legal argument for protecting the US steel industry on national security grounds seems far less plausible than the claim that the immigration ban protects national security (and I'm dubious of even that claim.) So you might expect the courts to question the steel tariffs on exactly the same grounds they challenged the immigration ban---Trump is on the record favoring this sort of action on entirely different grounds---jobs. On the other hand, courts have tended to show more deference to the government on economic regulation than on civil rights/equal protection issues, so I'm not making any predictions here.
4. It is likely that a suitably high steel tariff could save some jobs in the US steel industry. However, it seems much less likely that this would serve Trump's broader goals of restoring jobs in manufacturing. Tariffs protect industries by driving up the price of the commodity being imported. But if steel prices rise, then this puts other American manufacturers (cars, white goods, etc.) at a competitive disadvantage to imports. Mexican firms making cars or washing machines would be able to buy steel more cheaply than American manufacturers, and this would cost jobs in other sectors of the US economy. The net effect on the total number of jobs in manufacturing is likely to be pretty trivial, and could be either positive or negative.
5. Policies based on metaphors that romanticize and/or anthropomorphize the economy are unlikely to be wise:
The decision to use a 1962 law allowing the US government to limit imports that threaten its security readiness is intended to deliver on Mr Trump's campaign promises to bolster heavy industry and "put new American steel into the spine of this country", officials said on Thursday.
Sorry folks, those days are long gone.
Scott B. Sumner is the director of the Program on Monetary Policy at the Mercatus Center and a professor at Bentley University. He blogs at the Money Illusion and Econlog.
