IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/33997.html

Transitory and Permanent Import Tariff Shocks in the United States: An Empirical Investigation

Author

Listed:
  • Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé
  • Martín Uribe

Abstract

We estimate transitory and permanent import tariff shocks in the United States over the postwar period. We find that transitory tariff increases are neither inflationary nor contractionary, and are not associated with monetary tightening. In contrast, permanent tariff increases trigger a temporary rise in inflation (a one-off increase in the price level) and a brief tightening of monetary policy. Consistent with the intertemporal approach to the balance of payments, transitory tariff increases reduce imports and improve the trade balance, whereas permanent increases leave both largely unchanged. Transitory shocks account for approximately 80 percent of tariff movements. Overall, tariff shocks are estimated to be a minor driver of U.S. business cycle fluctuations on average and even during episodes of substantial tariff hikes, such as Nixon 1971, Ford 1975, and Trump 2018.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephanie Schmitt-Grohé & Martín Uribe, 2025. "Transitory and Permanent Import Tariff Shocks in the United States: An Empirical Investigation," NBER Working Papers 33997, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33997
    Note: EFG IFM ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w33997.pdf
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Régis Barnichon & Aayush Singh, 2026. "What Can History Tell Us About Tariff Shocks?," FRBSF Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, vol. 2026(01), pages 1-5, January.
    2. Bernardo Candia & James Mitchell & Damjan Pfajfar, 2026. "The Causal Effects of Tariff Uncertainty on Consumers' Macroeconomic Expectations and Spending Plans," Working Papers 26-05, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.
    3. Hiau Kee & Cristina Neagu & Yoto Yotov, 2026. "Bilateral Import Demand Elasticities and Balanced Trade Protection," Working Papers 202604, Center for Global Policy Analysis, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • E52 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Monetary Policy, Central Banking, and the Supply of Money and Credit - - - Monetary Policy
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • F41 - International Economics - - Macroeconomic Aspects of International Trade and Finance - - - Open Economy Macroeconomics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33997. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.