Early 20th century American exceptionalism: Production, trade and diffusion of the automobile

a column by Dong Cheng, Mario Crucini, Hyunseung Oh and Hakan Yilmazkuday for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

As the current narrative goes, the loss of US manufacturing jobs is due to competition from China and one way to get the jobs back is by running tariffs up the proverbial flagpole.

This column argues that in the case of the automobile industry, history shows exactly the opposite occurred.

In the early 20th century, the US achieved exceptionalism in innovation, production and trade in automobiles without domestic tariff protection, while foreign nations languished behind high tariff walls designed to protect their fledgling domestic automobile industries.

Continue reading  but be careful, a couple of the graphs have what I consider somewhat weird axises.

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