Consumer benefits from EU trade liberalisation: How much did we save since the Uruguay Round?

Throughout human history, trade remained a key factor in explaining the economic rise and fall of societies and nations. Despite the perennial nature of international trade in our societies and the ample evidence in favour of its importance, the benefits from trade for individual consumers are still subject to misunderstandings. Using a novel technique matching very detailed household consumption and import data, we quantify one narrow aspect of the multitude of consumer gains from trade - the tariff savings for EU households and consumers over the last two decades, as a result of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. Overall, the total annual tariff savings for all EU households (if the pre-Uruguay Round tariffs continued to apply on today's imports) amount to around 60 billion euro.