Higher tariffs on goods from poorer countries

Tuesday, April 4th, 2006

Ben Muse notes that the US collects higher tariffs on goods from poorer countries:

This January the US imported almost $3 billion in goods from France and almost $0.2 billion in goods from Cambodia. [It] collected about $30 million in tariffs on the imports from each country. In fact [it] collected slightly more from Cambodia.
[...]
The 12 international trade agreements since World War II have eliminated most of America’s technology- and heavy-industry tariffs. They have, however, left most shoe and clothing tariffs alone, even as employment patterns have shifted. (In 1974, the garment industry employed 1.4 million people; now it has 250,000.) Thus the United States collected about $23 billion in tariffs last year, and over $10 billion came from shoes and clothes, which together accounted for $94 billion in imports. Meanwhile, $307 billion in imported computers, steel, airplanes, semiconductor chips, medicines, and cars raised about $2 billion in tariffs. Cambodia and other low-income countries make high-tariff clothes and get hit hard; France and other rich countries specialize in low-tariff luxuries and technology products that flow freely across borders.

(Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.)

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