Last week, the U.S. International Trade Commission released its report on Distributional Effects of Trade and Trade Policy on U.S. Workers (Inv. No. 332-587). The report had been requested by USTR, as follows:
under authority delegated by the President to the United States Trade Representative and pursuant to Section 332(g) of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1332(g)), I request that the Commission conduct a two-part investigation on the potential distributional effects of goods and services trade and trade policy on U.S. workers by skill, wage and salary level, gender, race/ethnicity, age, and income level, especially as they affect underrepresented and underserved communities.
One of the parts of the ITC's analysis that I was looking forward to was an examination of how protectionism may have an unequal effect on different groups in society. As I noted here:
If I were still at a think tank, I would make this a priority project, and dive in to trying to study the negative distributional effects of tariffs, Buy America procurement, the Jones Act and other protectionist policies in general, and the negative effects on under-represented and under-served communities in particular.
In the context of the rise of Trump, there has been lots of talk about the impact of trade on "working-class whites," and people from both sides of the political spectrum have been focusing on how they can get the support of non-college educated white men in swing states. With that in mind, what I was hoping to get a sense of from the ITC report is how specific examples of protectionism, and how protectionism more broadly, may have an impact on specific groups. For example, which groups benefitted the most from the Section 232 tariffs on steel and aluminum imports imposed by the Trump administration?
The ITC's report is a long one, and I have only skimmed through it. (For a thorough, and critical, response, take a look at poli sci prof Gary Winslett's detailed comments.) As I knew I wouldn't have time to read it from beginning to end, I thought I would at least do a CTRL-F search to see what they said about "protectionism." To my surprise, that term wasn't used at all in the report. While it was clear, based on the participants in the roundtables, the symposium, and the hearing that were part of the investigation, that trade liberalization would be up for a critique in this report, I was hoping there would be more time spent on the impact of protectionism.
I will note that there was some discussion in the report of the impact of tariffs, such as cites to the always excellent work of Ed Gresser. (See, e.g., p. 94 of the report: "[Gresser] indicated that multiple U.S. trade agreements do not include tariff cuts on low-priced clothes and shoes, negatively affecting low-income communities"). But I think a broader examination of the interest groups promoting protectionism and the practical impact of protectionism, including a breakdown tied to specific groups of people who are affected, would have been useful.
When I pointed this out on Twitter, one response I got was that the word "protectionism" has an unclear meaning. As someone who complains about certain trade terms having unclear meanings, I am always open to this kind of concern, but in this case I strongly disagree. In the trade policy context, my sense is that people on both sides of the free trade vs. protectionism argument have a pretty good sense of the meaning, which is something along the lines of: "Government policies/actions intended to give domestic industries an advantage over foreign competitors." (The Dictionary of Trade Policy Terms, 1998 edition, puts it this way: "A climate of economic policy formulation which sees merit in preventing the exposure of domestic producers to the rigours of the international market.") For what it's worth, self-avowed protectionists use the term themselves, and I don't think there is much doubt as to what they have in mind.
(There is one caveat to this, which is that there is a divide over whether protectionism is about intent or effect. I am on the intent side of this argument, and my view is that the effect side is really just using effect as a proxy for intent, but they disagree and I don't see this debate getting resolved any time soon. But I don't think the debate is as important as it sounds, because my sense is that we all mostly agree when it comes to which measures are covered by the term, even if we disagree on how to characterize why these measures are a problem.)
