Good morning. For weeks I’ve been digging into the tariff war reverberating around the globe and affecting virtually every industry there is. To me, a major mystery of the Trump tariff crusade is this: The “Liberation Day” reciprocal duties he’s threatening are completely disconnected from what other nations are charging the U.S. on our exports. In virtually all cases, Trump’s tariffs are multiple times larger. How does he justify this giant gulf? The president claims we’re getting “ripped off” not by excessive tariffs but blatant “non-tariff barriers” (NTBs), such as quotas and technical standards that systematically block our goods from foreign markets, while we naively open America to the “cheaters” who lock us out. But the data show a different story. When I dug in, it became clear that the U.S. is utilizing many of the strategies that we’ve slammed trading partners for enforcing. Here’s what leaders should know about the policies underlying this chaotic debate:
A highly respected guide to where different countries’ trade policies stand on the spectrum from open to restrictive is the International Trade Barrier Index compiled by the Tholos Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank focusing on tax reform and policy research. For 2024, the Tholos data placed the U.S. as the 24th most protectionist economy in the world from a list of 88 countries, based on the number of restraints on trade each nation imposes. Overall, we’re about 10% above average in overall restrictions—on a roster featuring lots of bad actors.
NTBs come in a wide variety of forms. They encompass such practices as quotas, technical standards, and packaging, labeling, licensing, and safety requirements. In a 2024 study, the St. Louis Federal Reserve reported that across 15 manufacturing sectors, NTBs covered well over two-thirds of the imports of components, commodities, and finished products.
The U.S. is an avid user of a protectionist tool called the “tariff-rate quota.” Despite its name, the TRQ is really a non-tariff barrier because it doesn’t actually impose duties. TRQs typically allow products or commodities to enter the country duty-free to a certain level, and once the imports hit that bogey, trigger prohibitively high tariffs, effectively halting the flows of rival products and commodities from abroad, and enforcing a fixed quota to shield domestic producers. A top example: the sugar market, where, by law, the USDA rules restrict production to keep minimum prices generally higher than on the international markets. “The U.S. government is the leader of a nationwide sugar cartel,” a Cato Institute study declared.You can read the full story about how NTBs work and which industries are the most protected here. — Shawn Tully
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Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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