International Trade

TRADE AND THE WORLD’S POOR

The current United States’ administration’s tariff experiment has few parallels in modern world history, and – whether in scale or in method – none in American history.

Over the course of 10 months, it used a series of Executive Orders to make U.S. tariff (a) rates higher, up on average from about 2.4% to nearly 17%1; (b) more extensive, covering nearly all manufactured goods and agricultural products though exempting energy, some other natural resources, and more recently some tropical agricultural products; (c) more complicated, with varying and constantly fluctuating tariff rates for dozens of different countries; and (s) less anchored in international agreements and U.S. law, overriding not only World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and Free Trade Agreement (FTA) obligations but the Congressionally authorized U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule.