Talk:Tariff/Archives/2019

Confusion

I'm a bit confused. The table on this page showing UK tariffs averaging 0% for 1875 and 1913 seems to contradict this article showing an average of around 5% to 6% for the same period. The linked document sources figures for the table to <Imlah, Economic Elements, tables 11 and 19, pp. 121, 160. Can anyone help? JAC Esquire (talk) 20:48, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@JAC Esquire: It looks to me like the reality of 19th century free trade was the subject of an active debate in the late 80s/early 90s. The source for the tables is Paul Bairoch's book Economics and world history : myths and paradoxes (1993), and the tariff rates listed in the table are specifically only for manufactured goods. The article you linked to shows customs rates based on the actual value of customs collected, so I presume that Britain had tariffs on non-manufactured goods. The article you linked mentioned Bairoch by name, so it could be there was (is?) a historiographical disagreement about the best or appropriate way to measure tariffs. -Furicorn (talk) 08:25, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. The table underneath the one you refer to lists all products (for 1913) as 0% for the UK too.

Average Levels of Duties (1875 and 1913)

JAC Esquire (talk) 22:29, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Good point. I suppose someone with access to the sources listed on this tables could compare the methodologies, otherwise I think we've reached an impasse. I've already listed my best guess at the 1993 source in my comment above. My best guess at the additional 1989 source listed in the chart you posted is:

• Burke, Susan; Bairoch, Paul (June 1989). "Chapter I - European trade policy, 1815–1914". In Mathias, Peter; Pollard, Sidney (eds.). The Industrial Economies: The Development of Economic and Social Policies. The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire. Vol. Volume 8. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–160. doi:10.1017/chol9780521225045.002. ISBN 978-0521225045. {{cite book}}: |volume= has extra text (help)

I hope that helps-Furicorn (talk) 23:52, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

I have just read through Nye paper. According to this paper, while Britain moved towards a position of unilateral free trade on most goods it retained high tariffs on certain goods, not so much as a means of protectionism, but as a source of revenue, the table on the bottom half of page 44 is illuminating, for 1881 it shows a zero revenue for most goods listed in the sample, but the notable exceptions are for rum, brandy, coffee, tea, tobacco and wine. My understanding of what the paper suggests is that the British view of free-trade was seen by some other nations as hypocritical, as it still imposed high tariffs on such goods. I will also quote the following from the Nye paper which might give a reason as to why the compilation of Bairoch's tables used on this Wikipedia page show zero.

"In a different context, though Bairoch's recent account of commercial policy discusses tariff restrictions on all classes of items, he still describes the period of "European free trade, 1860-79" primarily in terms of trade in manufactures. His central comparative table of tariffs in Europe is based on a comparison of the average level of duties on 14 manufactured products in 1875 (Bairoch, "European Trade Policy," table 5, p. 42)."

JAC Esquire (talk) 23:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

This article is useful. JAC Esquire (talk) 02:12, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

Export Tax

Export Tax redirects to this article namely tariff. Fine if true, however this article doesn't discuss Export Taxes at all as far as I can tell. It seems to focus only on import taxes which I agree is the primary use of the word tariff in international trade. I was looking up Export Tax because I had some understanding that an export tax implemented by a nation which collectively may have some price setting power increases national income. That is a nation may have many firms competing to sell internationally however an export tax would force them to collectively raise prices to something more like the price they would set if they were a monopoly, which they may almost be if they acted in concert. Where is the discussion of export taxes? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 49.184.196.222 (talk) 10:33, 1 April 2019 (UTC)

Arguments against tariffs?

The article includes lots of arguments for tariffs, but there is no section for arguments against tariffs. That makes the article feel unbalanced.

The whole Economic analysis section is basically anti tariff. Benjamin (talk) 20:23, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but there's still a problem structurally. If you look only at the ToC it looks very one-sided. Maybe all that's needed is a section rename for Economic analysis? 73.95.239.9 (talk) 20:29, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

Oh, it could certainly use a serious rework. I find particularly objectionable the list of "unrealistic assumptions". Benjamin (talk) 21:25, 29 October 2018 (UTC)

This entire article reads very weird and very one sided. A lot of the statements seem a bit too declarative and the sources don't seem good either. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aa24577 (talk • contribs) 06:40, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, this article is very unbalanced and in need of significant rework.RockBass83 (talk) 03:05, 15 May 2019 (UTC)

Many of the "arguments in favor of tariffs" are NOT pro-tariff arguments

These "arguments in favor of tariffs" are instead various critiques against free trade or oftentimes just studies that found that free trade had some kind of adverse impact on some group. Many of the economists cited in the section vociferously oppose tariffs. For example, David Autor penned op-eds in favor of the TPP as a way to alleviate the harms that he identified in his research on the "China shock". I propose that unless something clearly argues in favor of tariffs that it should be removed, because it's WP:SYNTH and in some cases may be BLP vios by suggesting that this or that economist supports tariffs. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:23, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

This article should not be "pro-tariff" vs "anti-tariff"

The article should simply delineate what credibly economic research and expert assessments say about the history and effects of tariffs. There could be a sub-section about the 'politics of tariffs' where the content could be more anti-tariff vs pro-tariff. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:36, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Wildly non-neutral article

This article reads like an extended polemic in favor of tariffs, even though most economists oppose them. It has a long section "Arguments in favor of tariffs", so it should have a comparable section "Arguments against tariffs". Loraof (talk) 16:27, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it should. But it needs someone who knows at least something about the subject to write it. You could tag with template:unbalanced but if you do that you commit to putting in the work to source and write the balancing material. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 16:58, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Most of the bad content appears to have been added by Branog[1] and Taroq[2]. I'm pretty sure that Taroq is Branog's sock. They both basically add the same fringe WP:SYNTH content and both copy-paste long segments from anti-trade op-eds and articles. They also add content to the same pages that Ianfletcher used to edit[3] where he added content sourced to himself ("Ian Fletcher") (I don't know if it was copy-pasted). The other two editors also cite "Ian Fletcher" in their edits (he's a non-economist who publishes op-eds and self-published books against free trade). I'm pinging Neutrality who has experience with the Ianfletcher editor. This looks fishy to me. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:44, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Also, I now notice that "Ian Fletcher" is being referenced again in a bunch of trade-related articles. Could you help me delete those references? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:57, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

There are also a lot of references to "Spencer Morrison" all over trade-related articles who is also a non-expert who rants against trade without understanding it. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:02, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Looking at the edits by these accounts, I think we're justified in simply reverting the edits made by them in full. The edits are so elaborate and oftentimes have the appearance of adhering to mainstream economics/economists but are instead extremely misleading and misrepresent what the sources say. That would be the best way to rebuild these articles and get rid of the fringe BS. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:19, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Here is an example of how we could handle all the content sourced to Bairoch,[4] which permeates every trade-related article at this point. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 10:41, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

I have advised Taroq that they need to demonstrate that the sources cited satisfy wp:RS. The sources don't have to be economists but if not the test of competence is very high. For the moment, I will wp:assume good faith but I have become so concerned by the evident lack of balance in this article that I have invited contributors to Economics and Free trade to help balance it. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:29, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

The editor Taroq has been blocked because he's a sock[5]. All the edits should be undone. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 09:18, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Heavy-handed deletion

Regrettably, I have heavily gutted this article to remove blatantly partisan material contributed by banned editor user:Branog/user:Taroq (see talk above). It became evident that he was wp:nothere to make a neutral encyclopedia article but rather to push a political point of view. The consequence is that the article has undoubtedly been damaged by both the illicit editing and the surgery to remove the cancer. I invite others to contribute to its repair. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:07, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

This needs to be done on all the pages that Branog and Taroq edited. In my experience, many of their edits have the appearance of being well-sourced and accurate, but one closer look, it's fringe and misrepresentative of both the cited source and the literature in general. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:10, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans:, I felt partly responsible for this article getting the way it had become because I assumed good faith and didn't look closely at the reliability of the sources, so I felt that I should take the lead on cleaning it up. I believe that the article has been damaged by the process since I know next to nothing about the subject (only coming here because of the anticipated damage from Brexit) so my surgery has been with chainsaw not a scalpel. So I leave it to others to repair the other articles. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:41, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Hey, John Maynard Friedman, Lawrencekhoo and Neutrality, is there an easy way to find mentions of "Ian Fletcher" and "Spencer Morrison" in Wikipedia articles? Do you know of a good search feature for this other than Google? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 19:56, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans:, Bing does essentially the same as Google, so no. Presumably you know about qualifying the search argument by appending 'site:en.wikipedia.org'? (so that you don't get returns from copy sites). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:37, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

@Snooganssnoogans:, use Special:LinkSearch. To search for a specific domain, try Special:LinkSearch/*.example.com. This is a decent way to identify articles citing to poor sources. Neutrality^talk 15:19, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Economic analyses of Paul Krugman

An IP editor added this very long and very detailed list of criticisms of free trade by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman.

First, given whose ideas they are, they certainly must be taken seriously. But there are two issues with it (apart from using the present tense for something in the past): first, it is too long and too detailed, it needs to be edited down to a third of the size and concentrate on the economic arguments; phrases like 'he admits' have to go and we don't usually quote one source so extensively and verbatim. Second, the material probably belongs better in the Free Trade article but in any case at least a summary of it should be here.

The amount of work to edit it is not trivial to bring it up to wikipedia standards for this type of article, more than I can do - anyone else?

In 2009, Paul Krugman advises the United States to adopt protectionist measures against China. He was asking for a 25% customs duty on Chinese products. He writes that China is pursuing a mercantilist and predatory policy, i.e. it keeps its currency undervalued to accumulate trade surpluses by using capital flow control. The Chinese government sells renminbi and buys foreign currency in order to keep the renminbi low, which gives the Chinese manufacturing sector a cost advantage over its competitors. China's surpluses are draining US demand and slowing the economic recovery in other countries with which China trades. He therefore admits that trade deficits are impoverishing the United States and represents a threat . Krugman writes: "This is the most distorted exchange rate policy a great nation has ever followed". He notes that the undervalued renmenbi is tantamount to imposing high tariffs or providing export subsidies. A cheaper currency improves employment and competitiveness because it makes imports more expensive while making domestic products more attractive. He expects Chinese surpluses to destroy 1.4 million American jobs until 2011. As a result, he is asking for a general rate of 25% on Chinese products. So, he thinks that tariffs and trade restrictions may really reduce the overall trade deficit. He adds, "we currently live in a world where mercantilism works". So it is a not win-win system that enriches both parties to the agreement but rather a system where some countries get rich at the expense of others. He writes "What China is doing amounts to a seriously predatory trade policy, the kind of thing that is supposed to be prevented by the threat of sanctions. He explained that in a trade conflict, with a depressed world economy, it is the surplus countries that have a lot to lose, while the deficit countries could win, even if there are retaliatory measures and economic disruption. "Victims of this mercantilism have little to lose from a commercial confrontation. " He argue that protectionism is not a bad thing when unemployment is high or when the economic situation is not good. He quotes Paul Samuelson: "With employment less than full ... all the debunked mercantilistic arguments turn out to be valid." In addition, he supports the protectionism of other countries towards China: "Other countries are taking (modest) protectionist measures precisely because China refuses to let its currency rise. And more such measures are entirely appropriate".

In 2007, he notes that in the free trade system, the real wages of less educated workers fall due to competition from low-cost imports. Wages fall more than import prices and the problem is aggravated because trade is increasingly with low-wage countries. He also admits that free trade has a significant effect on income inequality in developed countries: "What all this comes down to is that it’s no longer safe to assert, as we could a dozen years ago, that the effects of trade on income distribution in wealthy countries are fairly minor. There’s now a good case that they are quite big, and getting bigger".

In 2016, he writes that protectionism does not lead to recessions. Indeed, in a trade war, since exports and imports will decrease equally, for the world as a whole, the negative effect of a decrease in exports will be offset by the expansionary effect of a decrease in imports. In addition, he notes that Smoot-Hawley tariff didn't cause the Great Depression. The decline in trade between 1929 and 1933 "was almost entirely a consequence of the Depression, not a cause". Trade barriers were a response to depression, partly a consequence of deflation.

He also noted that the trade deficit has been harmful to the US manufacturing sector: "There is no doubt that increased imports, especially from China, have reduced employment in the manufacturing sector..., the complete elimination of the US trade deficit in the manufactured goods sector would add about two million jobs in this sector."

In 2016, he writes: "it’s also true that much of the elite defense of globalization is basically dishonest: false claims of inevitability, scare tactics (protectionism causes depressions!), vastly exaggerated claims for the benefits of trade liberalization and the costs of protection, hand-waving away the large distributional effects that are what standard models actually predict. I hope, by the way, that I haven’t done any of that"..."So the elite case for ever-freer trade is largely a scam".

— 185.228.229.24

Anyone? Or perhaps the original author could work on it to make it more concise? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 15:47, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

There is also the question of how much New York Times material we can copy and plead wp:fair use but I'm pretty sure that this exceeds it. And the citations are a complete mess. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 20:38, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Revised version

I have halved the text and eliminated the citations.

In 2009, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman advised the United States to adopt a 25% tariff on Chinese products to reduce the US trade deficit. He wrote thatIn his view, China was pursuing a mercantilist and predatory policy, that is, it manipulated its currency at below fair value to accumulate trade surpluses using capital flow control. He considered that China's surpluses were draining US demand and slowing economic growth in countries with which China trades. He believes that Chinese surpluses destroy millions of American jobs.

He notedHis analysis is that the international trade is not a win-win system that enriches both parties to the agreement, but rather a system where some countries enrich themselves at the expense of others. He noted that in the free trade system, the real wages of less educated workers are declining due to competition from low-priced imports and that free trade has a significant effect on income inequality in developed countries.

He has opined that protectionism does not lead to recessions—indeed, in a trade war, since exports and imports decrease equally, for the world as a whole, the negative effect of a fall in exports is offset by the expansionary effect of a fall in imports. In addition, he noted that the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not cause the Great Depression.

Are there any additional corrections that need to be made for the text to be published?185.228.230.106 (talk) 10:13, 14 December 2019 (UTC)185.228.229.24 185.228.229.24

Thank you for your co-operative reply. I'm sure that we can work together to integrate this valuable material.

This version is a lot better but still needs a little more work. First of all, we need a neutral section title (better still integrated into an existing section), we can't have a section dedicated to one economist no matter how eminent. (Though a section title could be changed). Second, this article is about tariffs world-wide, not about free trade in general and especially not just about the USA in particular. (So hold onto this version, it may work well in Free trade). I wonder if there is a way to generalise it without taking liberties with the words of the wise? Or maybe the section title could say that it is about US tariff policy [though I worry that such a title will encourage uninformed comment from those who approve of the scatter-gun approach of the current administration). Thirdly, we have to mark clearly what is his analysis and what is indisputable fact (so I struck out a few of your words and added some neutral point of view replacements in italics—but I wonder if these might be read as sarcastic? I also added some wiklinks.

In the bit about currency manipulation, the words "using capital flow control" are too cryptic. I think I know what you mean but it needs spelling out a bit more (maybe the currency manipulation article has some words you can reuse). --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:37, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

References

Hello, First of all thank you for your help in editing this text.

I note that the diagnosis of the Economic Policy Institute is similar to that of Paul Krugman with regard to the effects of the trade deficit in the free trade system, i.e. job and wage losses. I therefore propose that the text be included in the "deindustrialisation" section. Perhaps the title should be changed to "deindustrialization and economic slowdown". Then Krugman doesn't just talk about the United States. It also encourages other countries trading with China to set tariffs. Then I think we need to explain Paul Krugman's vision of international trade and the effects of free trade in the economy to understand his motivations for setting tariffs. Finally, I deleted the words "using capital flow control" which finally seem useless to me.

Here is the text with new modifications:

In 2009, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman advised countries trading with China to set up tariffs on Chinese products. In his view, China was pursuing a mercantilist policy, that is, it manipulated its currency at below fair value to accumulate trade surpluses.[2][5] He considered that China's surpluses were draining demand, slowing economic growth and cutting jobs in countries with which China trades.[1][4]For example, he believes that Chinese surpluses destroy millions of American jobs and that the United States should adopt a 25% tariff on Chinese products to reduce the US trade deficit.[1][2]

According to him, in a depressed world economy, any country running an trade surplus is depriving other nations of jobs.[6] His analysis is that the international trade is not a win-win system that enriches both parties to the agreement, but rather a mercantilist system where some countries enrich themselves at the expense of others[3]. He noted that in the free trade system, the real wages of less educated workers are declining due to competition from low-priced imports and that free trade has a significant effect on income inequality in developed countries.[7][8]

He has opined that tariffs do not lead to recessions—indeed, in a trade war, since exports and imports decrease equally, for the world as a whole, the negative effect of a fall in exports is offset by the expansionary effect of a fall in imports. In addition, he noted that the Smoot-Hawley tariff did not cause the Great Depression.[9][10]

185.228.228.112 (talk) 18:20, 17 December 2019 (UTC)