Import duties are the most important and most common types of custom duties. As noted above, they may be levied for either revenue or protection, or both, but tariffs are not a satisfactory means of raising revenue, because they tend to encourage economically inefficient domestic production of the dutied item. Even if imports constitute the bulk of the available revenue base, it is better to tax all consumption, rather than only the consumption of imports, in order to avoid uneconomical protection.
Import duties are no longer an important source of revenues in developed countries. In the United States, for example, revenues from import duties in 1808 amounted to twice the total of government expenditures, while in 1837 they were less than one-third of such expenditures. Until near the end of the 19th century, the customs receipts of the U.S. government made up about half of all its receipts. This share had fallen to about 6% of all receipts before the outbreak of World War II, and it continued to decline.
By 2012, tariffs accounted for just a sliver of U.S. government revenueâless than 2%âreflecting decades of declining rates under global free trade agreements. But that trend reversed in 2018 when President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs on a wide range of goods, targeting countries like China and pushing average U.S. duty rates to their highest levels in decades. A second wave of increases followed his return to office in 2025, marked by a new executive order and a tiered system of âreciprocalâ tariff rates across the globe.
A tariff may be specific, ad valorem, or compoundâi.e., a combination of both. A specific duty is a levy of a given amount of money per unit of the import, such as $1 per yard or per pound. An ad valorem duty, on the other hand, is calculated as a percentage of the value of the import. Ad valorem rates furnish a constant degree of protection at all price levels (if prices change at the same rate at home and abroad), while the real burden of specific rates varies inversely with changes in the prices of the imports. A specific duty, however, penalizes more severely the lower grades of an imported commodity. This difficulty can be partly avoided by an elaborate and detailed classification of imports on the basis of the stage of finishing (e.g., raw materials or finished goods), but such a procedure makes for extremely long and complicated tariff schedules. Specific duties are easier to administer than ad valorem rates, for the latter often raise administrative problems, especially concerning the valuation of imported articles.
A list of all import duties is usually known as a tariff schedule. A single tariff schedule applies to all imports regardless of the country of origin. This is to say that a single duty is listed in the column opposite the enumerated commodities. A double-columned or multicolumned tariff provides for different rates according to the country of origin, with lower rates being granted to commodities coming from countries with which tariff agreements have been negotiated. Most trade agreements are based on the most-favored-nation clause, which extends to all nations party to the agreement whatever concessions are granted to the most-favored nation.
Every country has a free list that includes articles admitted without duty, but few conclusions about the impact of tariffs on trade can be drawn by looking at the free list and the value of the goods imported into a country. It is nearly impossible, furthermore, to measure the height of a tariff wall and to compare the degree of protection between countries by calculating the ratio of tariff receipts to the total value of imports. Using this approach, one might erroneously conclude that tariff protection is very limited in a country that exempts more than half of all imports from duties. Such a conclusion, however, is not correct, because some items are subject to very high tariffs, and, as those tariff levels increase, the quantity of the dutied imports decreases.
A better method of measuring the height of a tariff wall is to convert all duties into ad valorem figures (based on the value of the goods) and then to estimate the weighted-average rate. The weighting should reflect the relative impact of the different imports; a tariff on foodstuffs, for example, may be far more significant than a tariff on luxuries consumed by a small group of people.
In addition, a better understanding of protectionism can be reached through the effective rate of protection. It recognizes that the protection afforded a particular domestic industry depends on the tariffs levied against materials used to make the product (inputs) as well as tariffs levied on the final product (output). Suppose, for example, that half of an industryâs inputs are imported and subject to a duty of 100%. If the imports with which the industry competes are subject to a duty of less than 50%, there is no effective protection. Calculating effective protection in a real-world situation requires complex economic analysis. (See international trade: Measuring the effects of tariffs.)
