Reversing 50 years of support for free trade, the U.S. raised tariffs on over $300 billion worth of annual imports in 2018 and trade partners around the world retaliated in kind. How did this trade war impact the U.S. economy? Was it a net win or a net loss for the U.S., and how were those gains and losses distributed across different groups?

This film explores “The Return to Protectionism” by Pablo D. Fajgelbaum, Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Patrick J. Kennedy, and Amit K. Khandelwal, published in 2019 in the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Pinelopi K. Goldberg, Elihu Professor of Economics at Yale, is a former Chief Economist at World Bank Group and an affiliate of EGC.