But it also went a step further: After factoring in the retaliation by other countries, the main victims of Trump’s trade wars had been farmers and blue-collar workers in areas that supported Trump in the 2016 election.
Retaliation Costs
“Workers in very Republican counties bore the brunt of the costs of the trade war, in part because retaliations disproportionately targeted agricultural sectors, and in part because U.S. tariffs raised the costs of inputs used by these counties,’’ the authors wrote.
The studies are the most authoritative yet to document the negative effect of Trump’s tariffs on the U.S. economy, though others have shown the negative consequences. Economists at the Institute of International Finance last week calculated Chinese retaliatory tariffs alone were causing roughly $40 billion a year in lost U.S. exports.
Official trade data due to be released on Wednesday also are expected to show the U.S. trade deficit in goods with the world hitting a new record in 2018 because of the combination of a surge in imports to get ahead of the new tariffs last year and slowing exports.
A spokeswoman for Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers declined to comment on the new papers and referred inquiries to the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. Spokespeople for USTR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a speech Saturday to conservative activists Trump dismissed criticism of his tariffs and boasted that he was simply following what he argued was a glorious history of using import taxes in American history.
“I found some very old laws from when our country was rich -- really rich -- the old tariff laws. We had to dust them off. You could hardly see, they were so dusty,” Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference.
At a minimum, Trump said, tariffs were “the greatest negotiating tool in the history of our country,” pointing to talks now underway with China which appear increasingly likely to result in a deal in the coming weeks.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.