Christopher Magee asks why rich nation tariffs are not high. He concludes they are in fact high, but in hidden ways: In the median industry … over $42 is transferred from consumers to producers for every $1 in efficiency costs caused by the tariff. … The industry lobby should be willing to contribute a lot to the politician to raise those tariffs. And because higher tariffs cause such a small reduction in overall welfare, the policy-maker should be willing to trade higher tariffs for campaign cash. … Thus, instead of asking why there are trade barriers at all, the real puzzle in the literature should be why the trade barriers are not extremely high in most industries.
Wikipedia has a decent article on non-tariff barriers.Standards, fees, licensing, quotas, rules-of-origin, anti-dumping laws, govt policy, etc, etc.Environmental and food standards have risen dramatically just as tariffs have fallen. So you can claim you are open to trade, but it's just that Country X eco and food standards don't meet your licensing requirements.The US uses national security reason to block a fair bit of trade -- like in ship-building or ports operation and any # of industries deemed to have a national security component.
Some of these barriers obviously will never go away. The US military hires lots of private contractors to build and maintain their IT networks. Clearly they won't ever hire a Chinese firm to do this work. Even though many of the components are built in China, and a fair # of the actual workers are Chinese immigrants. (A non-trivial # of whom have been caught spying for China.)
Wikipedia has a decent article on non-tariff barriers.Standards, fees, licensing, quotas, rules-of-origin, anti-dumping laws, govt policy, etc, etc.Environmental and food standards have risen dramatically just as tariffs have fallen. So you can claim you are open to trade, but it's just that Country X eco and food standards don't meet your licensing requirements.The US uses national security reason to block a fair bit of trade -- like in ship-building or ports operation and any # of industries deemed to have a national security component.
Some of these barriers obviously will never go away. The US military hires lots of private contractors to build and maintain their IT networks. Clearly they won't ever hire a Chinese firm to do this work. Even though many of the components are built in China, and a fair # of the actual workers are Chinese immigrants. (A non-trivial # of whom have been caught spying for China.)
"quotas and other non-tariff barriers"What are the other "non-tariff barriers"? Subsidies?