Trump Tariff and Firm Relief: Winners and Losers from Steel Tariff Exclusion Request

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

On March 2018, the Trump administration introduced 25 percent tariffs on steel and
10 percent tariffs on aluminum imports. To minimize the adverse effects of these
tariffs to downstream US producers who import these products, the exclusion
request that grants tariff exemptions has been also established. In this paper we
examined the determinants of the authority’s decisions on the exclusion requests.
Our analysis focuses on the political factors. Specifically, we ask whether companies
operating business in states where Trump won the majority vote (Trump state) in the
2016 presidential election were more likely to get tariff exemptions. Our estimation
result suggests that firms located in Trump states were more likely to be granted
exemptions. Especially it appears that the decisions were made based on a dual
standard. While firms with lower sales to employment ratios were more likely to be
approved for the exclusion requests in Trump states, it was the opposite for firms in
non-Trump states.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Executive Summary
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Exclusion Request
• 3. Data and Estimation
• 3-1. Data
• 3-2. Model Specification and Estimation
• 4. Estimation Results
• 4-1. Main Results
• 4-2. Additional Analysis
• 5. Concluding Remarks
• References
• Appendix