The Dark Matter of Bilateral Preferential Margins: An Assessment of the Effect of US Tariffs

Abstract

This article aimed to quantify the impact of United States (US) trade policies and assess how changes in tariff margins will affect imports to the US. To do that, we estimated trade elasticities by sector using a gravity structural model, computed US preference margins on a bilateral basis, and investigated alternative scenarios for properly measuring the effects of US trade agreements on international trade. Results showed that the removal of all preferences might lead to a negative net effect of $41,202 million (2% of predicted trade), indicating that the actual US structure of tariffs generates a trade diversion to less efficient exporters and destroys trade flows, even if the impact differs by sector.