Empirical models of the effects of United States protection: A survey of recent literature

This paper surveys the recent literature on the effects of United States protection. Most of these studies find that tariffs provide limited benefits to protected industries but cause considerable harm to household and industrial consumers of protected goods. Most studies do, however find some terms-of-trade benefits to the United States in the present structure of protection. Also, studies of quotas find that they have become more important in recent years and that they are a major source of welfare losses for the United States. This general agreement regarding the effects of United States policy arises from papers employing different research methodologies and addressing different questions.