“互惠”关税：它们的真正目的是什么？（英）2025

What Are They Really For? Robert Z. LawrenceAugust 2025 Note:The author thanks Lawrence Edwards and Gary Hufbauer for comments;Madona Devasahayam, Nell Henderson, and Lauri Scherer for editorial assistance; andAriyasuren Baldansenge and Jing Yan for data quality control assistance. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Claiming they would offset unfair foreign trade practices that cause chronic UStrade deficits, President Donald Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs on countrieswith large bilateral trade surpluses with the United States, adjusting them mostrecently on August 1, 2025. But the administration’s use of bilateral US tradedeficits as a proxy for unfair foreign trade practices is wrong because imbalancesalso reflect other causes of trade, such as factor endowments, technologicaldifferences, and the impact of US preferential programs. Robert Z. Lawrence,nonresident senior fellowsince 2001, is the Albert L.Williams Professor of Tradeand Investment at theJohn F. Kennedy Schoolof Government at HarvardUniversity. The administration overestimated the tariffs required to eliminate bilateralimbalances. It applied the same formula to all economies, ignoring differentresponses to tariffs when products and supply conditions vary. It assumedthat only a quarter of the tariffs will be passed through into final US prices andneglected the overwhelming evidence that the pass-through rate is usuallybetween 50 and 100 percent. It ignored global value chains and modelled importsas fully produced in the country from which they are finally shipped, but whenimported products contain intermediate inputs from third countries, this canseriously understate the penalty the tariffs impose on the exporting countries. Viewing all bilateral US deficits as unfair, the administration has threatened alltargeted US trading partners with high tariffs, but the deficits are concentrated inonly a few countries. As a result, with widespread application, many economieswould suffer harm with little impact on the United States. US trade with all19 targeted African countries, for example, accounts for just 1.5 percent of allbilateral deficits targeted. Given these flaws, it is not surprising that the administration has shifted fromclaiming the tariffs are essential for reciprocity and now plans to raise tariffs onsmaller targeted trading partners by similar amounts without regard for their surpluses. The estimates that do use the formula have been used as a threat topersuade countries with larger surpluses to agree to tariffs that remain high—typically around 15 percent. These tariffs will inflict considerable economicdamage and unless US spending relative to income declines, they will do little toreduce America’s overall trade deficits. INTRODUCTION On February 13, 2025, President Donald Trump called for an investigation intothe negative effects of unfair foreign practices such as (1) tariffs on US products;(2) alleged unfair foreign taxes, including value added tax rebates on exports;(3) the costs on US exporters of nontariff barriers; (4) persistently undervaluedexchange rates; and (5) any other foreign measures. On April 2, Trump announced that a minimum 10 percent tariff would applyto all US trading partners, even those with free trade agreements and deficitsin their bilateral trade with the United States. In addition, claiming to rely oncomprehensive investigations undertaken by administration economists into thefull range of unfair foreign practices, he announced special additional “reciprocaltariffs” to counter what he characterized in his Rose Garden presentation as“tariffs, nonmonetary barriers and other forms of cheating” by 57 economies.1 But the president’s announcement was misleading.The administration didnot actually estimate the impact of the various unfair practices he had described.Instead, it adopted the fiction that the net impact of all these practices couldbe proxied by the ratio of each economy’s bilateral trade surpluses to its USimports.2It then provided estimates, for each country, of the tariffs that wouldachieve bilateral balanced trade.3 After the financial markets plummeted, however, Trump delayed theapplication of the reciprocal tariffs for 90 days to allow countries timeto negotiate better deals. By July 7, however, only deals with the UnitedKingdom and Vietnam had been concluded. Yet the president further delayedimplementation of the reciprocal tariffs until August 1. He wrote letters to 23 ofthe targeted countries, which mostly reiterated the original tariff levels, andindicated his intention to impose these unless additional agreements could bereached.4On August 1, Trump implemented tariffs mostly at 15 percent or higherfor most of the targeted countries (see table A2 in the appendix). The tariffs have now become unmoored from their original justification.Instead of aiming at reciprocity based on a careful study of unfair measures thatneeded to be eliminated to achieve bilateral balance, the reciprocal tariffs we