Did Importers Try to Front-Run Recent Tariffs on China?

Thomas Cook and Mariia Dzholos

Economic Bulletin, 2025, 4

Abstract: Because tariffs are a tax on foreign goods, tariffs are thought to reduce imports. However, imports may actually increase after a tariff is announced if importers can stock inventories ahead of the tariff’s implementation. We find that after the announcement of additional tariffs on China in May 2024, imports from China increased by 15 percent for EV batteries, which are difficult to substitute.

Keywords: importers; tariffs; international trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.kansascityfed.org/documents/10659/Econ ... olosMatschke0117.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedkeb:99492

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Bulletin from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Zach Kastens ().