Trade War Data

Last updated 01/24/2020: updated to reflect the phase 1 trade deal in mid-January 2020. The US tariffs increases effective on 09/01/2019 have been reduced from 15% to 7.5%. Further US tariff increases are canceled. China’s purchase list from the phase 1 deal is included with crosswark to GTAP codes (tariff_list, sheet 22). China’s tariff reductions have not been announced yet and are not included.

Researchers at the China Ag Center build and maintain a database of recent tariff increases by the United States and the retaliatory tariff increases from other countries (the CARD Trade War Tariffs Database). This database provides raw tariff increase data collected from official sources, as well as tariff increases aggregated to 6 digit HS code and GTAP commodity levels to facilitate quantitative analysis. These data are provided to the public for free.

Please cite the database as:
Li, M. (2018) CARD Trade War Tariffs Database. https://www.card.iastate.edu/china/trade-war-data/ (Accessed XX-XX-XXXX)

If you have questions or comments please contact our staff.

Users can download the following data products:

A. Lists of all tariff increases from the US and retaliatory tariffs imposed by other countries.
These tariff increases begin with the steel and aluminum tariffs implemented by the US on March 23, 2018, and are continuously updated (see top of the page for date of the most recent update). Each tariff increase (e.g., China’s $50 billion tariff on the US) is contained in a numbered excel sheet. The first excel sheet contains an index with brief descriptions, implementation dates, and links to original announcements.

B. Individual lists of tariff increases are merged into one list and aggregated to 6 digit HS code level.
See the documentation and Stata dofile in the replication package for how this data is generated.

C. Tariff increases aggregated to the GTAP commodity-level using corresponding trade values as weights (e.g., China’s tariff increase on the US is weighted by US export values to China).
For the US steel and aluminum tariffs, separate aggregations are done for China, Mexico, Canada, EU, and the other top 20 steel or aluminum exporters to the United States, as well as the rest of world. See the documentation and Stata dofile in the replication package for how this data is generated.

D. A replication package with all the data products above, as well as raw and intermediate data, Stata codes for processing raw data, and documentation.

List of studies that have cited our CARD Trade War Tariff Database as of July 20, 2020