Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=Transcript of the talk, from the video's captions. Auto-generated: speaker names in particular are unreliable.
=

# The Return to Protectionism

Authors:   
Discussant: None  
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b93MZK2T4lA&t=0s


## Talk (00:00:00 – 00:11:00)

[00:00:10] i'm don kissy a business journalist entrepreneur and current night budget fellow here at columbia business school it's an absolute pleasure to be here today with professor ahmet kondawal who is the jerome a chasen professor of global business  
[00:00:24] at the school professor kondowal is also a senior scholar with the school's chasen institute where his research focuses on emerging markets and global business he has explored globalization protectionism and its impact on a number of developing economies  
[00:00:39] today we'll delve into this trend and discuss the impact on what global trade has and what if anything should be done to reverse it professor condewall welcome thanks so much don it's good to see you  
[00:00:52] um where do you see the new us administration moving on trade they're obviously not going to move too quickly we've got the paris agreement we've got the tpp he's got so many things to confront right now but in terms of global trade  
[00:01:05] the huge elephant in the room is u.s china china u.s where is that relationship going and what do you feel needs to be implemented in terms of policy and potential full-on reforms to kind of reign this relationship  
[00:01:20] in to the point where it doesn't send the whole world into a tailspin you got the two biggest economies going head to head it can't be good for the rest of the world so i wanted to know what your thoughts on on potential new policy  
[00:01:32] and in what direction they should move in so it's a great question so but let me let me take it one step back and and talk about the the us trying to trade war um and then that that'll be a good good way to think about what the what the biden administration is likely  
[00:01:46] to do okay so so where we sit today is uh is is kind of enmeshed in a trade war between the two largest economies in the world what are these what are these numbers what are the size of the numbers involved well  
[00:02:01] 20 in 2018 when the u.s imposed tariffs on on china and not just china but also other trade partners um we ended up imposing tariffs on about twenty percent of our imports um so four hundred and four hundred twenty billion dollars um  
[00:02:14] and the tariffs on those imports that were targeted go up about about twenty percent okay so think about it that like a sales tax going up by by 20 and this is this is pretty pervasive across the economy um  
[00:02:27] the us tracks 25 000 goods uh that come in through the borders every year and and we've imposed a tariff increase on about 70 000 of those and so by by some of the analysis that i've done this is  
[00:02:41] um this is probably the largest return to protectionism that the us has kind of experienced in uh since uh since the great depression and uh our trade partners didn't sit silent so they end up imposing terrorists on u.s exports  
[00:02:56] um so the 133 billion dollars worth of u.s exports are targeted by by terrorists by mostly by china but also other countries as well it's about nine percent of us exports tariffs are going up by by about 15  
[00:03:10] and i spent uh quite a bit of time uh over the past couple years trying to get get a handle on on what this kind of very large increase in protectionism has done to the us economy and one of the things i realized in  
[00:03:23] discussing this with in in the classroom has been that uh i think historically if you ask business leaders to think about the types of risks that they face um kind of big macro risks they often talk about um  
[00:03:37] interest rates for instance um and interest rate risk is something that people really really understand or have a good handle on because the fomc meets uh eight times a year and you know it's talked a lot about news and and what i noticed that when when the tariffs when the terrorists  
[00:03:52] came came raining down there was a lot of uh there was a lot of uncertainty about both you know what that means to the economy and how the terrorists actually propagate and so it's useful maybe to spend a little bit of time just uh just a moment to kind of spelling out how how a tariff  
[00:04:05] actually affects an economy sure um so so what is it what is the tariff a tariff you can think about as a tax on an imported good when the us imposes a tax on an imported good um in principle consumers should be worse off so imagine you're  
[00:04:20] importing a good for a hundred dollars the the the us government poses a tariff of 20 that should make us consumers better off it's actually not um not immediately clear that that's always going to be the case because if  
[00:04:34] i'm the importer of the good and my government's imposing a 20 tariff on the on the chinese import that i'm i'm buying i might go to my chinese supplier and say no lower your price down to 80 so that when i apply the tariff it's it's back to  
[00:04:49] basically a hundred dollars and for all of 2018 and 2019 essentially uh the trump administration was basically saying that that was what was going on the the the the chinese or the foreign partners were quote unquote eating the tariff  
[00:05:04] and so this came down to just an empirical question uh when we looked at the data to see what was happening at the prices of the border um when you impose this tariff and it turned out that effectively the price of a hundred dollars was not changing at all so that when you impose  
[00:05:18] the tariff of 20 the the tariff inclusive cost of this product was 120 so really you know during this trade war what what this analysis have shown it's been been shown in other papers as well is that the u.s consumer  
[00:05:33] is really taking it on the chin from as a result of these of these of these tariffs now the flip side of that so so this is kind of one effect of the trade war is that u.s consumers uh particularly the consumers of imported goods are going to be worse off  
[00:05:46] okay now who's going to be you know why are we imposing the tariffs there should be some gain somewhere who's going to gain well it's going to be the producers the domestic producers who are likely to gain because now the imported goods are becoming more expensive  
[00:05:59] how much they gain kind of depends on a few factors how substitutable is the chinese good with the good that i produce if it's very substitutable that's going to be great for me as a domestic producer because the prices of chinese good has just gone up 20 and so everyone's going to flock to  
[00:06:13] my good on the other hand maybe i'm using chinese inputs to produce my good and so now my costs are going up right so that's going to kind of blunt the effect of the producers and at the same time  
[00:06:27] my foreign trade partners china in particular may be imposing a tariff on the product that i actually make so now whereas i was selling it to more chinese consumers they they may be less interested in buying for the same reason that the us is u.s consumers are less interested in buying  
[00:06:40] imported goods so hugely helpful um this is really helpful and i really like how you've delved into tariffs i want to pivot a little bit and talk more about your research i know that you focused on certain areas  
[00:06:53] as a senior scholar with chasen what are you looking at right now and what do you think the implications could be if widespread research or even finite research on globalization and trade were to come out even in a month from now  
[00:07:06] do you think the biden administration would leap on your research tell us about your findings yeah so so um so when when you try to tally up what the overall effect of of the trade war is consumers producers  
[00:07:20] in government revenue what we end up finding is that the us economy lost about 20 25 billion dollars worth um as a result of the trade war um and that kind of that number masks a pretty large loss to  
[00:07:34] u.s consumers um that's where u.s producers and government revenue are are taking up uh kind of offsetting some of the loss and so that's a 25 billion dollar loss to the us economy which which i think is a self-inflicted wound to some extent because  
[00:07:49] you know to the extent that you think that jobs are going to come back as a result of the trade war um the empirical evidence has shown that employment hasn't gone up uh in the sectors that received the protection and to be clear you're referring to the u.s economy  
[00:08:03] i'm referring entirely right now to the us economy and so and so uh and so now we think about from the from from from the current administration's perspective i think where the current administration sits is that  
[00:08:17] they're they're likely to be cautious i think one thing that the trumpet trump administration was very very instrumental in doing is uh changing the debate about about terrorists it used to be the case that um politicians from both parties were  
[00:08:30] roughly in agreement on a general free straight free trade strategy that the u.s u.s pursues and i think the trump administration was very um effective in changing the nature of that debate so i expect  
[00:08:43] that that the current administration will be pretty cautious um on lifting of the terrorists particularly with respect to china because they may be holding the chinese tariffs um in the cards for a for a grander grander strategy of uh  
[00:08:58] uh that would um include not just uh the economic consequences of of uh kind of deteriorating um relationships but also the political consequences okay so professor what do you think the big takeaway is from your current research  
[00:09:12] at the chasen institute so i think the the big takeaway is that the the tariffs i think were self-inflicted wound on the u.s economy for for the stated objectives of what what the administration was hoping to  
[00:09:26] get out of the tariffs uh i don't think have been materialized and we've seen price increases and a general loss to the us economy as a result of the tariffs at the same time i think the bigger thing which i haven't quantified but i truly think is  
[00:09:40] is important is i think we've lost um a lot of good will amongst uh our our allies and trade partners as a result of the trade war and this has come through a variety of ways in particular the way in which the us has dealt with the world trade organization  
[00:09:53] um in the past couple years and i and i worry that um even if the bright administration is able to make some commitments um towards a more integrated global economy uh the worry that i have is that trade partners will say well this is likely to  
[00:10:07] last only four years and a new administration would would immediately roll it back and so i think that's one of the reasons that i think the maybe maybe the major takeaway is that the the uncertainty that the the the trade war has has kind of  
[00:10:21] kind of pushed into the global economy i think is likely to to be quite high for some time sure makes perfect sense and when you talk about um the possibility of this being rolled back it all circles back to one big issue  
[00:10:35] many people on the global stage you know raised concerns about was u.s credibility can we trust the us on this can we trust the u.s on that and when it comes to us china can we trust them on this so it's really interesting and i'm sure  
[00:10:49] myself and everyone in the cbs community are looking forward to more findings from your research thank you so much professor kamdawel thank you