THE ANTEBELLUM AMERICAN TARIFF - FOOD EXPORTS AND MANUFACTURING

The American antebellum tariff provided high levels of protection to most of American manufacturing. Yet most economic historians have concluded that the tariff had a modest effect on American industrialization in part because of terms of trade improvements arising from America's dominance as a raw cotton exporter. A computational general equilibrium analysis contradicts these conclusions. The tariff had no important terms of trade effects because America's marginal export was food not cotton. Furthermore, appropriate modeling of the competition between imports and domestic production shows that much of American manufacturing was dependent on tariff protection. © 1992.