Tariffs, Nontariff Distortions, and Effective Protection in U. S. Agriculture

This paper extends the effective‐protection concept to include tariff and nontariff trade distortions and also the entire structure of domestic farm policy measures. Nominal and effective rates of protection are then presented for disaggregated agricultural production and processing industries for the years 1958, 1963, and 1968. The estimates reveal that nontariff measures give rise to extremely high effective protection rates in certain agricultural sectors; in others, tariff and nontariff measures affecting intermediate inputs have important taxation effects. The analysis also indicates that agricultural policy changes have substantially altered the rates of protection accorded certain agricultural sectors.