The Smoot-Hawley trade war
- Author(s)
- Mitchener Kris, Kevin O'Rourke, Kirsten Wandschneider
- Abstract
We document the outbreak of a trade war after the United States adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested, with many eventually choosing to retaliate with tariffs. Using a new quarterly dataset on bilateral trade for ninety-nine countries, we show that U.S. exports to retaliators fell by 28%–32%. Using a second new dataset on U.S. exports at the product level, we find that the most important U.S. exports to retaliating markets were particularly affected, suggesting a possible mechanism whereby the United States was targeted despite most-favoured-nation obligations. The retaliators’ welfare gains from trade fell by 8%–16%.
- Organisation(s)
- Department of Economic and Social History, Department of Economics
- External organisation(s)
- Santa Clara University, New York University Abu Dhabi
- Journal
- The Economic Journal
- Volume
- 132
- Pages
- 2500-2533
- No. of pages
- 34
- ISSN
- 0013-0133
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueac006
- Publication date
- 2022
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 502049 Economic history
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Economics and Econometrics
- Portal url
- https://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/the-smoothawley-trade-war(6751d539-5b38-4593-b580-f18928c0eaae).html