The Antebellum Tariff on Cotton Textiles Revisited / Douglas A. Irwin, Peter Temin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Irwin, Douglas A.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Temin, Peter.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w7825.

NBER working paper series no. w7825

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2000.

Summary:

Recent research has suggested that the antebellum U.S. cotton textile industry would have been wiped out had it not received tariff protection. We reaffirm Taussig's judgment that the U.S. cotton textile industry was largely independent of the tariff by the 1830s. American and British producers specialized in quite different types of textile products that were poor substitutes for one another. The Walker tariff of 1846, for example, reduced the duties on cotton textiles from nearly 70 percent to 25 percent and imports soared as a result, but there was little change in domestic production. Using data from 1826 to 1860, we estimate the responsiveness of domestic production to fluctuations in import prices and conclude that the industry could have survived even if the tariff had been completely eliminated.

Notes:

Print version record

August 2000.