Amit Khandelwal's research featured in The Economist: "How Chinese goods dodge American tariffs"
June 27, 2024: Khandelwal and coauthor Pablo Fajgelbaum of the University of California, Los Angeles analyzed U.S. border tariff exemptions and found the policy benefitted both Chinese producers and low-income American consumers.
The Economist
June 27, 2024
...There are big winners from this tariff avoidance. They include Chinese producers. However, the avoidance also generates a windfall for American consumers. Messrs Khandelwal and Fajgelbaum calculate that, absent the exemption, consumers would have paid $7.8bn more in tariffs in 2021. Include fees and the fact that producers often cut prices just below the threshold to avoid tariffs, and consumers save $22bn a year, or $69 each. Poor households benefit most as they are the biggest consumers of cheap Chinese goods.