Trade restrictiveness and deadweight losses from U. S. tariffs, 1859-1961

This paper uses detailed tariff data to calculate the Anderson-Neary trade restrictiveness index (TRI) for the United States in 1859 and annually from 1867 to 1961. The TRI is defined as the uniform tariff that yields the same welfare loss as an existing tariff structure. The import-weighted average tariff understates the TRI by about 70 percent over this period. This approach also yields annual estimates of the static welfare loss from the tariff structure; the largest losses occur in the early 1870s (about one percent of GDP) but they fall almost continuously thereafter to less than one-tenth of one percent of GDP by the early 1960s. On average, import duties produced a welfare loss of 40 cents for every dollar of revenue generated, slightly higher than contemporary estimates of the marginal welfare cost of taxation.