"In the field of modern economics, tariffs have always been a negative 'topic'. As long as it exists, it distorts the market and reduces efficiency."

——Stiglitz

"Isn't tariffs essentially 'increasing' taxes' on American companies?"

" left;">"When you came to power, you promised to reduce taxes, but the tariffs were not paid by foreign companies, but by their own importers."

After emphasizing the benefits of countless "the United States imposes tariffs", the reporter's question still asked White House spokesman Caroline Levitt.

A few days after she was asked, last weekend, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a notice through its official website late at night: The federal government has agreed to exempt "peer-to-peer tariffs" for electronic products such as smartphones, computers, chips; exempted products are suitable for electronic products entering the United States after April 5, and the "peer-to-peer tariffs" that have been paid can seek refunds.

The stock prices of American companies such as Apple, Nvidia, and Microsoft rose sharply, and everything seemed to be hit by reporters - collecting tariffs is essentially an increase in taxes on American companies, which is a negative, and vice versa.

On the day when the time was turned back, Caroline also complained to the reporter: "You are challenging my economics knowledge. I regret giving you the opportunity to ask questions, the next one."

Caroline Levitt

Now, there seems to be someone else who regrets you, and you have been regretting it.

On Sunday, Trump announced that the suspension of tariffs was only a procedural measure, and would eventually impose different industry-specific tariffs on these technology products.

's "repeated jumps" have caused confusion and confusion, but in the eyes of economists, it is a matter of time before this happens. From beginning to end, neither Trump nor his team have been able to learn the economics course of "tariffs", but they attempt to use it to "make America great again." Over the past few months, they have often lamented: "Tariffs are a very important topic in the field of economics. Sometimes they have to 'thank you've had to 'thank' Trump, who has saved this almost dead field by himself. ”

In other words, to understand the logic behind the US tariffs and the reasons for the repeated jumps, we need to turn our attention to the depths of history and examine the evolution of tariffs and their role in different worldviews.

Today's article lets us pick up this "dead" study again, hoping to bring some inspiration to everyone.

Since ancient times, there have been taxes related to trade.

The historical evolution of tariffs can be roughly divided into three stages:

Left;">Age of "jurisdiction", era of mercantilism, era of multilateral trade.

From a simple point of view, if it is regarded as the subject, then other individuals, companies or foreign countries are allowed to conduct trade activities within the country, and this permission from the source is not necessarily free, and often requires a price to be exchanged. This is the essence of tariffs.

According to the terms of modern law, tariffs first reflect the jurisdiction over territorial and economic activities. In plain words, it is "I am the master of my territory."

So, since its inception, various means surrounding tariffs, including preferential treatment, tax increases and even embargoes, have expressed some kind of The first emperor in history to express his attitude with tariffs was Emperor Wen of Han, known as the "first benevolent monarch of the three generations". When the Han Dynasty was first established, it was not a unified dynasty as everyone imagined now.

The atmosphere of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period still existed. In the eyes of the world, the Han Dynasty was the Han Dynasty, and the vassal states were the vassal states. Although the two had superiors and inferiors, the latter was still a very independent entity.

Since it is an independent entity, then "close" is really important. Therefore, during the reign of Empress Dowager Lu and Emperor Hui of Han, the "Tianguan Order" was issued. Officials and people must carry valid documents when entering and leaving Guanjin, and strictly investigate smuggling, especially "strategic assets" such as gold and horses, to prevent the power of the princes and kings in Kanto to avoid excessive size. "Now the princes have many strengths, so they built passes and prepared them, just like the six kingdoms in the Qin Dynasty." Later, the Han Dynasty's court generally recovered from the "Empress Lu Rebellion", and Emperor Wen of Han also firmly sat firmly on the throne, so he formally ordered the "no useless propaganda of the Han Dynasty", so that the territory directly under the Han Dynasty and other local princes could freely trade. This not only showed the emperor's "both love and selflessness" demeanor, but also promoted economic exchanges in Guandong and Guanzhong areas, laying the foundation for the later "Wenjing Governance".

Later, when Emperor Jing of Han succeeded to the throne and summed up the merits of Emperor Wen of Han, the first thing was: Passing the beam is not different from the distance.

Although the first to achieve great unification in form was Qin Shihuang, the realization of the territory of the seven heroes of the Warring States Period was actually combined into a real economy, Emperor Wen of Han actually opened up the beginning.

When the world entered the Age of Discovery from the classical era, mercantilism became popular, it was the golden period when tariffs came into play, and it reflected more the naked competition between the two and the competition for wealth. The core view of mercantilism is: a total amount of wealth is fixed, mainly reflected in the possession of precious metals. Therefore, international trade is regarded as a zero-sum game: one's profits will inevitably mean the other's loss. Under this idea, the goal is to "export as much goods as possible to earn gold and silver, while importing as little goods as possible to prevent gold and silver from flowing out."

At this time, the industry was in its infancy, and protected its own enterprises by imposing high tariffs on imported goods, reducing the attractiveness of imported goods; at the same time, they encouraged their own goods exports through tax refunds and subsidies, especially high-value-added finished products.

The one that played the most was a colonial empire like Britain. Tariffs were mainly used to ensure the interests of the suzerain states. For example, the British Navigation Ordinance stipulated that colonies could onlyTrade with the UK, or goods must be transited through the UK and paid tariffs.

In the context of the Age of Discovery and Mercantilism, tariffs have changed from a tool that reflects jurisdiction to an important weapon of inter-economic war.

Such tariffs are designed with defense and concern, and "strong is free trade, and weak is tariff barriers" is a portrayal of this era - because when strong, they want to export high-value-added industrial products, and naturally they call for trade freedom. When weak, they are in order to protect their backward industries, tariff barriers are more likely to be added.

This mercantilist view of tariffs has far-reaching influence, and its core conception of protectionism and the concept of viewing trade as a tool of competition have reappeared in various forms to this day.

Freight ships at the West India Terminal in London, England

In the era of globalization and multilateral trade, tariffs have become more "friendly", such as many of which have special and more preferential unilateral tariffs for developers - that is, "You can charge tariffs on my goods, but I am exempt from taxes on you."

This expression expresses an attitude of helping latecomers and welcome latecomers to enter their own market. Of course, this unilateral exemption of tariffs for underdeveloped, especially those with abundant raw materials, is actually a win-win strategy of "public and private".

Because underdeveloped, the industrial capacity is often poor, and the final products that can be exported are relatively few, mostly raw materials, while those with stronger industrial capacity are good at processing raw materials and then exporting them. Therefore, unilateral exemption of tariffs for underdeveloped products is actually to reduce the cost of local manufacturing, and is essentially a support for local manufacturing, which has become something that almost all industrial powers like to do.

But Trump seems to want to create new uses for tariffs.

In his eyes, tariffs are both a manifestation of jurisdiction - punishing foreign countries, and a source of income - increasing fiscal revenue.

But to explain the absurdity of this idea, we need to go back to the question of the White House reporter: Is tariffs an increase in taxes on American companies?

From the formalities, the tariffs are indeed paid by the US importer. So in this sense, it is indeed an increase in taxes on American companies.

In fact, this touches on the ultimate proposition of "tariff" research - the destination of tariffs.

If the demand elasticity of US importers is low, that is, they are very dependent on the demand of a certain foreign commodity and cannot find a good alternative, then they still have to continue importing even if the price rises due to tariffs.

In this case, most of the cost of tariffs will be borne by the importer, and it is likely to be passed on to American consumers by raising the selling price.

In New York stores, the "made" clothing label

At this time, the reporter's statement at the beginning of the article was closer to reality: tariffs are indeed like increasing taxes on American companies and consumers.

In turn, if foreign exporters have little supply elasticity and rely heavily on the US market, and their products are difficult to sell to other places, in order to maintain market share, they may be forced to lower their export prices and absorb some or even most of the tariff costs themselves.

In this case, tariffs are more like taxing foreign companies.

In reality, tariffs are often shared by both import and export parties. For example, in 2018, when the tariffs came down, many Walmart suppliers received letters from Walmart, demanding that the export price drop by 10%, and everyone shared the impact of the tariff.

But from an economics point of view, it is actually irrelevant to whom taxes are collected directly. Because in the end, the two parties are sharing the transaction. Whoever spends more and who spends less depends on the relative bargaining power of both parties, which is the price elasticity of supply and demand as economics. Simply put, which party is less sensitive to price changes, that is, it is less elastic, which partyYou have to bear a larger proportion of the tariff costs.

In this sense, it is inaccurate that Trump and his team simply regard tariffs as punishments to foreign countries without considering the type of goods and foreign industrial structure.

So, Trump's "balanced trade" formula derived under the wrong definition has become the object of ridicule in the academic community.

This formula that ordinary people seem to be extremely complex is designed to hedge the trade deficit with tariff revenue, that is, the money that the United States "losts" in the deficit must be recovered through the increased tariff rate - thus reflecting "punishment" and "increasing income".

The formula comprehensively considers several things:

1. How many have you sold to me in total? This is the pure import amount, that is, m_i, how much did I buy you, it is x_i, that is, the pure export amount.

2.How much do you owe me? That is, the import deficit is equal to export minus import, that is, x_i—m_i in the formula.

3. When the price increases, how much will I buy less? This is called import demand elasticity, which indicates the sensitivity of import volume to price changes, that is, ε. The Trade Representative Office sets this value to -4, which means that for every 1% increase in price, the import volume decreases by 4%.

4. How much price increase will the tariff increase in the amount of tariffs added? This is called tariff transfer elasticity, that is, ϕ, which means that for every 1% increase in tariff, the price of imported goods increases. The value set is 0.25.

5.Δτ: tariff rate increased to balance trade.

The specific algorithm is as follows:

1. Due to the increase in tariffs, the current import amount will also change. So what is the total import after the tariff increase?

——Demand elasticity × Price transfer elasticity × Current total imports.

2. The total import amount after this modification is multiplied by the closingTax is what Trump expects to earn through tariffs.

——Increased tariff rate × demand elasticity × price transmission elasticity × current total import.

Then the right side of the equal sign is given a "deficit".

3. Finally, Trump said that reciprocity should be considered, so he only charged half of this tariff, which is equivalent to everyone sharing the income brought by the deficit.

Objectively speaking, the method used by this formula to calculate how much tariffs should be added is not completely imagined out of thin air. There is a set of its own calculation logic behind it. The problem is that this logic may be used in the wrong place, resulting in an seemingly reasonable formula to calculate an unreliable result.

This set of calculation logic tries to find a balance, one end is the deficit between the United States and the other end, and the other end wants to balance the balance by adding tariffs.

But combined with reality, this calculation is actually meaningless. First of all, it is very incomprehensible to assume that all commodities have fixed demand elasticity and import elasticity for US exports.

Each has its own special export, and some commodities have very low demand elasticity. If you increase tariffs, the import volume will not be reduced too much. So for American companies doing this type of business, tariffs are a real increase in taxes.

In the tariff war between 2018 and 2019, most of the tariffs imposed by the United States were increased to US importers and consumers, rather than exporters. This is essentially a tax on the public, especially affecting low- and middle-income families.

In 2018, Trump announced tariffs

Secondly, tariffs may lead to exchange rate adjustments. Once the currency of the exporting country depreciates, its exported goods will become relatively cheap when denominated in US dollars, which will partially offset the price increase effect caused by the US tariffs.

Last and more importantly, the U.S. trading partners are not robots that only respond according to the formula. On the one hand, there will be retaliatory tariffs, which will be punished by reducing U.S. exports to it; on the other hand, trading partners may strategically guide the export of goods to other countries outside the United States.

When the U.S. imposes high tariffs on goods from , exporters may seek to sell goods to Southeast Asia, Europe or other markets. At the same time, U.S. importers may also shift their procurement sources from Vietnam, Mexico, etc. that are not affected by or less affected by tariffs.

Ironically, in order to show the "authority" of its calculations, the US Trade Office specially showed itself on its web page to quote several top economics publications, showing that it is "reasonable". However, the above rebuttal was proposed by the authors of the article they quoted.

From history, the role and significance of tariffs have been evolving.

Modern tariffs, although can still serve specific strategic goals or express positions, have large-scale and indiscriminate applications, especially in the absence of sufficient economic logic and neglect of chain reactions, often do more harm than good, and will ultimately go against the original intention of the design.