Tariff

What Is a Tariff?

A tariff is a tax imposed by one country on the goods and services imported from another country.

Understanding a Tariff

Tariffs are used to restrict imports. Simply put, they increase the price of goods and services purchased from another country, making them less attractive to domestic consumers.

A key point to understand is that the tariff imposed affects the exporting country indirectly as the domestic consumer might shy away from their product due to the increase in price. If the domestic consumer still chooses the imported product then the tariff has essentially raised the cost for the domestic consumer.

There are two types of tariffs:

Why Governments Impose Tariffs

Governments may impose tariffs to raise revenue or to protect domestic industries — especially nascent ones — from foreign competition. By making foreign-produced goods more expensive, tariffs can make domestically produced alternatives seem more attractive.

Governments that use tariffs to benefit particular industries often do so to protect companies and jobs. Tariffs can also be used as an extension of foreign policy as their imposition on a trading partner's main exports may be used to exert economic leverage.

Unintended Side Effects of Tariffs

Tariffs can have unintended side effects:

History of Tariffs

Pre-Modern Europe

In pre-modern Europe, a nation's wealth was believed to consist of fixed, tangible assets, such as gold, silver, land, and other physical resources. Trade was seen as a zero-sum game that resulted in either a clear net loss or a clear net gain of wealth. If a country imported more than it exported, a resource, mainly gold, would flow abroad thereby draining its wealth. Cross-border trade was viewed with suspicion, and countries much preferred to acquire colonies with which they could establish exclusive trading relationships, rather than trading with each other. 

This system, known as mercantilism, relied heavily on tariffs and even outright bans on trade. The colonizing country, which saw itself as competing with other colonizers, would import raw materials from its colonies, which were generally barred from selling their raw materials elsewhere. The colonizing country would convert the materials into manufactured wares, which it would sell back to the colonies. High tariffs and other barriers were put in place to make sure that colonies purchased manufactured goods only from their colonizers. 

New Economic Theories

The Scottish economist Adam Smith was one of the first to question the wisdom of this arrangement. His Wealth of Nations was published in 1776, the same year that Britain's American colonies declared independence in response to high taxes and restrictive trade arrangements.

Later writers, such as David Ricardo, further developed Smith's ideas, leading to the theory of comparative advantage. It maintains that if one country is better at producing a certain product, while another country is better at producing another, each should devote its resources to the activity at which it excels. The countries should then trade with one another, rather than erecting barriers that force them to divert resources toward activities they do not perform well. Tariffs, according to this theory, are a drag on economic growth, even if they can be deployed to benefit certain narrow sectors under some circumstances.

These two approaches — free trade based on the idea of comparative advantage, on the one hand, and restricted trade based on the idea of a zero-sum game, on the other — have experienced ebbs and flows in popularity.

Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Relatively free trade enjoyed a heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the idea took hold that international commerce had made large-scale wars between nations so expensive and counterproductive that they were obsolete. World War I proved that idea wrong, and nationalist approaches to trade, including high tariffs, dominated until the end of World War II.

From that point on, free trade enjoyed a 50-year resurgence, culminating in the creation in 1995 of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which acts as an international forum for settling disputes and laying down ground rules. Free trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — now known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) — and the European Union (EU), also proliferated.

The 2010s

Skepticism of this model — sometimes labeled neoliberalism by critics, who tie it to 19th-century liberal arguments in favor of free trade — grew, however, and Britain in 2016 voted to leave the European Union. That same year Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election on a platform that included a call for tariffs on Chinese and Mexican imports, which he implemented when he took office.

Critics of tariff-free multilateral trade deals, who come from both ends of the political spectrum, argue that they erode national sovereignty and encourage a race to the bottom in terms of wages, worker protections, and product quality and standards. The defenders of such deals, meanwhile, counter that tariffs lead to trade wars, hurt consumers, hamper innovation, and encourage xenophobia.