U.S. Terms of Trade: Significance, Trends, and Policy







Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress



The nation’s terms of trade—the ratio of an index of export prices to an index of import prices—
is a measure of the export cost of acquiring desired imports. Increases and decreases in its terms
of trade indicate whether a nation’s gains from trade are rising or falling. A sustained trend of
improvement of the terms of trade expands what our income will buy on the world market and
can make a significant contribution to the long-term growth of economic welfare. Similarly, a
falling terms of trade raises the export cost of acquiring imports and reduces real income and the
domestic living standard. While trade is a process of mutual beneficial exchange, each trading
partner’s share of those benefits can change over time, and movement of the terms of trade is an
indicator of that changing share.
A force or forces that changes the average level of export or import prices will change a nation’s
terms of trade. In this regard we can first distinguish between transitory and more enduring
forces. Relatively short-term changes in national spending patterns can lead to similarly short-
term changes in the terms of trade. These spending changes could be the result of changes in
economic policy or swings in private sector spending over the course of the business cycle. In
either case, the general scenario will be that the spending change induces either an inflow or
outflow of foreign capital and an associated appreciation or depreciation of the exchange rate. A
more enduring effect on the terms of trade is likely to emerge from more fundamental changes in
world demand and the productive prowess of the economy. In general, anything that leads to an
increased demand for the nation’s exports would cause that nation’s terms of trade to improve.
Such demand changes will often be at the caprice of shifting tastes and preferences in the market
place, for good and for bad. It is also possible that an economy can do things that raise the
probability that its exports will be highly desirable.
A steady post-war rise in the U.S. terms of trade appears to have ended in the late 1960s. The rate
of decline of the U.S. terms of trade was fairly substantial through the 1970s. In the 1980s, the
pattern changed again with the terms of trade strengthening through mid-decade, then resuming
its deterioration. In the 1990s, the deterioration stopped, with the terms of trade remaining
relatively steady through mid-decade, then strengthening moderately through the end of the
decade. By the year 2003, the U.S. terms of trade was more or less at the same level that it was in
the 1980s, suggesting that the post—1960s trend deterioration seems to have stopped, with the
U.S. terms of trade at a lower but generally stable level.
The terms of trade is unlikely to be a direct focus of economic policy, with changes most often a
collateral effect of policies aimed at other economic goals. Nevertheless, it is useful to understand
how various economic policies would influence the terms of trade, so as to craft policies that have
the greatest positive effect on economic well-being. Also, it is possible to configure policies that,
while primarily focused on other goals, maximize the probability of a favorable terms of trade
effect. As such, particular configurations of macroeconomic policy, trade policy, and technology
policy each have the potential for improving the nation’s terms of trade. This report will not be
updated.






Significance of the Terms of Trade..................................................................................................1
What Determines the Terms of Trade..............................................................................................2
Trends in the U.S. Terms of Trade...................................................................................................3
Economic Policy and the Terms of Trade........................................................................................5
Macroeconomic Policy..............................................................................................................5
Technology Policy.....................................................................................................................6
Trade Policy..............................................................................................................................7
Industrial Policy........................................................................................................................9
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 10
Figure 1. U.S. Terms of Trade.........................................................................................................4
Author Contact Information...........................................................................................................11





conomics tells us that a nation exports so that it may import. Exports are the cost—goods
and services the domestic economy must give up—while imports are the benefit—foreign
goods and services that we wish to acquire in trade. Clearly the nation is better off if, for E


any given volume of imports, it exchanges a smaller volume of exports rather than a larger
volume. The nation’s terms of trade is a measure of the export cost of acquiring desired imports.
Increases and decreases in its terms of trade indicate whether a nation’s gains from trade is rising
or falling. While trade is a process of mutual beneficial exchange, each trading partner’s share of
those benefits can change over time and movement of the terms of trade are an indicator of that
changing share.

The terms of trade is most often defined as a ratio of an index of export prices to an index of
import prices. An increase in this ratio—a rising terms of trade—means that any given volume of
export sales will now exchange for a larger volume of imports. In this circumstance, the nation’s
real income and living standard increase because an improved terms of trade allows the economy
to expend fewer resources for export production, yet command the same volume of imports.
These freed resources can be used to produce more domestic goods or buy more imports. Either
way the volume of goods available to the economy for a given level of resource use is now larger.
A sustained trend of improvement of the terms of trade could make a significant contribution to
the long-term growth of economic welfare. Similarly, a decrease in the ratio of export prices to
import prices—a falling terms of trade—raises the export cost of acquiring imports and reduces
real income and the domestic living standard. The decrement to economic well-being occurs
because the economy must allocate more resources to the production of exports and reduce the
production of domestic output to command the same volume of imports. In this case, the total
volume of goods available for consumption for a given level of resource expenditure must fall.
A fall of the terms of trade, however, does not mean that trade is harmful to the nation, merely
less beneficial. A lower terms of trade will mean that there was a reduction of the magnitude of
the nation’s gains from trade, but gains most often will still exist. So the nation is likely to still be 1
better off with trade than without trade. In a dynamic framework, we have to recognize that it is
possible that changes in the terms of trade are coincident with changes in the level of trade that
also changes the magnitude of the overall gains from trade. Thus, the size of the share and the
size of the “pie”to be divided-up are both changing. For the United States in the post-World War
II period, the level of trade has steadily risen and along with it the size of the gains from trade.
Therefore it is possible even with a falling terms of trade, for there to be a net increase in
economic welfare, albeit a smaller gain then would have occurred had the U.S. terms of trade
been steady or increasing.
Nevertheless, a nation need not be indifferent to a trend of deterioration in its terms of trade
because over time this can tally up to a significant decrement to economic well-being. This report
examines the recent history of the U.S. economy’s terms of trade, the forces that could have
influenced the path of the terms of trade, and what policy options there are for favorably affecting
the terms of trade.

1 It is theoretically possible for an economy to be made absolutely worse off by trade due to a large deterioration of its
terms of trade. The practical significance of such an outcome is, however, likely slight , and particularly unlikely for an
advanced industrial economy like the United States.




A force or forces that changes the average level of export or import prices will change a nation’s
terms of trade. In this regard we can first distinguish between transitory and more enduring
forces. Relatively short-term changes in national spending patterns can lead to similarly short-
term changes in the terms of trade. These spending changes could be the result of changes in
economic policy or swings in private sector spending over the course of the business cycle. In
either case, the general scenario will be that the spending change induces either an inflow or
outflow of foreign capital and an associated appreciation or depreciation of the exchange rate.
These events affect the terms of trade in two ways. For an economy experiencing an appreciating
currency caused by a net capital inflow, there will also be an increase in the foreign currency
price of its exports and a decrease in the domestic currency price of imports, and an improvement
of that nation’s terms of trade. In addition, the inflow of foreign capital can cause a change in the
home currency price of imports from the lending nation (e.g., the yen price of a Japanese export).
That capital inflow represents a net transfer of income from the lending nation to the borrowing
nation. If, as is likely, the lending nation has a higher propensity to spend on its exported goods
than does the borrower nation, the overall demand for that good is reduced and the home currency
price of the exported good will tend to fall. This, of course, also improves the terms of trade of
the borrower. As we would expect, the economy that has a net outflow of capital will have the
same two forces working in the opposite way and induce a deterioration of its terms of trade.
Such exchange rate movements and capital flows may not be long lived, however. There will be
limits imposed by borrower and lender alike on how long such an imbalance can be sustained.
Therefore, there is a strong expectation that economic forces will cause an eventual reversal of
the domestic spending pattern or of economic policy that initiated this process, and a reversal of
the effect on the terms of trade.
More enduring effects on the terms of trade are likely to emerge from more fundamental changes
in world demand and the productive prowess of each economy. In general, anything that leads to
an increased demand for a nation’s exports would cause that nation’s terms of trade to improve.
Such demand changes will often be at the caprice of shifting tastes and preferences in the market
place, for good and for bad. It is also possible that an economy can systematically assure that its
exports are highly desirable. If, for example, an economy can generate a brisk pace of
technological advance that is the perpetual wellspring for the creation of new and highly desirable
products or higher quality products, then it is likely that the rest of the world’s demand for this
economy’s products will be steadily strong, boosting export prices, and improving the nation’s
terms of trade. While imitation by foreign producers may eventually erode the large economic
gains associated with any one innovation and new product, the ongoing process of innovation will
keep the country’s exports rich in new, strongly demanded products. Such an economy can be
said to have a comparative advantage in the production of new products; and the gains from trade
in these products will likely manifest as an enduring positive effect on the economy’s terms of
trade. There is a consensus among economists that the U.S. economy for more than a century has
been such an innovating economy as evidenced by the very high incidence of sizable research
efforts among industries that export.
However, if technological change manifests largely as an improvement in the efficiency of the
productive process for existing goods, it is an event that increases the supply of goods that are
exported, tending to deteriorate that economy’s terms of trade, while improving that of nations it





exports to. Two forces work to cause this deterioration. One, greater output raises real income
and, in turn, the demand for imports, pulling up their price. Two, a larger supply of exports made
possible by the technological change will be absorbed in the world market only at a lower price.
A similar effect on the terms of trade would occur if foreign producers increase the supply of the
goods that an economy exports. This could occur through efficiency improvement by current
foreign producers or simply an increase in the number of foreign sources of supply. On the other
hand, forces that increase the foreign supply of the goods an economy imports will tend to
improve its terms of trade.
Over time it is likely that economic growth, at home and abroad, will tend to show either a bias
towards the production of goods a country exports or a bias towards production of the goods a
country imports. If export biased, then the terms of trade tends to deteriorate over time, to the
benefit of our trading partners. In contrast, an economy that experiences import-biased growth in
the rest of the world tends to improve its terms of trade to the detriment of its trading partners. It
is suspected that over the post-World War II era, economic growth in the rest of the world was
export biased, generating more than proportionate increases in the supply of goods the U.S.
exports, tending to deteriorate the U.S. terms of trade.

It is telling of the economy’s international trade performance to consider whether there has been
any long-term trend in the nation’s terms of trade. A rising trend would indicate that a country’s
trade performance has improved relative to other trading countries, reaping an increasing share of
the gains from trade, and real income benefits for the economy. A falling trend would be
indicative of deteriorating trade performance, decreasing share of the gains from trade, and
decrements to real income. It is quite possible for a nation with persistent trade surpluses to have
a declining trend in the terms of trade and a nation with recurring trade deficits to have a rising
long-term trend. It is also likely that any observed trend will not necessarily reflect any one cause,
but rather be the net effect of multiple and often opposing forces, whose relative strength may
wax and wane over time.





Figure 1. U.S. Terms of Trade
140
130
120
110
100
90
80
19 6 9 19 73 19 77 19 8 1 19 85 19 8 9 19 93 19 97 20 0 1
Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
Note: A ratio of an index of export prices to an index of import prices, 1996=100.
A steady post-war rise in the U.S. terms of trade appears to have ended in the late 1960s (see
Figure 1 above). The rate of decline of the U.S. terms of trade was fairly substantial through the

1970s. In the 1980s, the pattern changed again with the terms of trade strengthening through mid-


decade, then resuming its deterioration. In the 1990s the deterioration stopped, with the terms of
trade remaining relatively steady through mid-decade, then strengthening moderately through the
end of the decade. By 2003, the U.S. terms of trade was more or less at the same level that it was
in the mid to late 1980s, suggesting that the post—1960s trend deterioration seems to have 2
stopped, with the terms of trade at a lower but generally stable level.
The trend of decline in the U.S. terms of trade since the 1960s is evidence that from the United
States’ perspective economic growth in the rest of the world, particularly in the early portion of
this time period, was “export biased.” That is, economic growth in the rest of the world has been
composed of a more than proportionate expansion of production of goods that the United States
produced and exported.
This would seem a plausible outcome given the nature of economic growth for the world
economy at this time. Clearly, in the early post-war period the U.S. found itself in a unique and,
very likely, unsustainable position. It was the largest and most productive economy on the globe,
and its output probably represented more than 50% of worldwide output. A war ravaged world
economy offered a paucity of alternative sources of supply for the goods the United States was
exporting. This meant that U.S. goods (exports) enjoyed strong demand and faced little effective
competition on world markets. In this situation, the relative price of U.S. exports could be
expected to be strong.

2 The pattern of change in the U.S. terms of trade was probably also affected by the change in the world exchange rate
regime in the early 1970s. The move from a fixed to floating rate system induced a sharp fall in what was then an
overvalued dollar. That exchange rate effect is also reflected in the falling terms of trade at that time.





Yet, as economic growth steadily rekindled in the rest of the world, foreign economies became
more like the United States in what they produced and in the efficiency with which they produced
it, leading to an ever greater supply of foreign goods to compete with U.S. exports on world
markets. With these developments, one could expect the strength of demand for U.S. exports to
ebb, their relative price to weaken, and the U.S. terms of trade to decline.
This was not the consequence of United States lagging behind; rather, other nations were
“catching up.” Such a resurgence was the predictable outcome of the healthy recovery and growth
of the post-war global economy, and an outcome the United States would not want to reverse.
The magnitude of the trend decline over the last three decades, however, has been small. The
average annual decline amounts to a fall of about one half a percentage point annual decrease of
export prices relative to import prices. Moreover, the effect of that decline of the terms of trade on
American living standards is smaller still, because only 10% to 12% of U.S. income was spent on
imports over this period. That roughly translates into a decrement to U.S. real income of about

0.05 percentage points (or one-twentieth of a percent) annually. This is not a huge cost,


considering the U.S. economy averaged a 3.0% annual growth rate of real GDP over this same
period, but over time it cumulates to a loss equal to 1.0% of GDP every 15 years. Again, this is a
reduction in the United States’ share of the possible gains from trade. Trade still makes the United 3
States better off than not trading.

The terms of trade is unlikely to be a prime focus of economic policy, with changes most often a
collateral effect of policies aimed at other economic goals. Nevertheless, it is useful to understand
how various economic policies would influence the terms of trade, so as to craft policies that have
the greatest positive effect on economic well-being. Will the behavior of the terms of trade be
working with or against the desired policy outcome? Also, it is possible to configure policies that,
while primarily focused on other goals, maximize the probability of a favorable terms of trade
effect. And, of course, it is possible that there could be an interest in making the terms of trade a
policy goal. This section will consider how various types of economic policies will likely
influence the economy’s terms of trade. The likely practical viability of each policy will also be
considered.
The traditional tools of monetary and fiscal policy are unlikely to be directly aimed at achieving a
particular goal for the terms of trade. The target of these powerful policy instruments is economic
stabilization: securing stable and rapid economic growth, low inflation, and low unemployment.
Such macroeconomic policies can, however, have an significant indirect effect on the terms of
trade. The pursuit of stabilization goals will often cause the dollar’s exchange rate to increase or

3 For evidence that the U.S. gains from trade have been positive, see Jeffery Frankel and David Romer, Does Trade
Cause Growth? NBER Working Paper No. 5476, June 1999; Edward E. Leamer and James Levinsohm, “International
Trade Theory: The Evidence,” in The Handbook of International Economics, vol. 3 (Amsterdam: North Holland,
1995); Catherine L. Mann, Globalization of IT Services and White Collar Jobs: the Next Wave of Growth, International
Economics Policy Briefs, no. pb03-11 (Washington, IIE, Dec. 2003); and Douglas A. Irwin, Free Trade Under Fire
(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003) pp.29-54.





decrease, and exchange rate movements will directly affect the relative price of exports and
imports and change the terms of trade. We saw in the 1980s that the combination of a tight
monetary policy (aimed at reducing inflation) with an expansive fiscal policy (caused by tax cuts
aimed at reducing the federal tax burden and by spending increases aimed at strengthening
national defense) increased the level of domestic interest rates, inducing a large net inflow of
foreign capital seeking the higher relative return on U.S. assets, that in turn, generated a sizable
appreciation of the dollar. The United States’ terms of trade rose with the dollar. The
improvement in the terms of trade was substantial, but not long lived. With a change in the
configuration of macroeconomic policy and an ebbing of foreign capital inflows, the
improvement in the terms of trade was reversed before the end of the decade.
Macroeconomic policy could have another indirect, but more enduring effect on the terms of
trade. It seems probable that a consistently well-run economy, where macroeconomic policy has
steadily secured rapid growth, low and stable inflation, and low unemployment, is more likely to
be an economy that provides a strong incentive for technological advance and innovation, an
economy that has an abundance of healthy and forward looking industries, and an economy that is
prolific creator of a broad array of goods for which there is persistent strong demand by the rest
of the world. Such a demand response could have a positive effect on the terms of trade. Of
course, to the extent that sound macroeconomic policy only enhances our ability to supply goods
to the world market, there may be a negative effect on the terms of trade. (This is certainly not an
argument against sound macroeconomic policy, merely that we gain somewhat more under the
first scenario.)
In economics, technology is the way scarce resources are combined to produce a desired good or
service. Whether the growing of wheat, the manufacture of automobiles, or the development of a
new drug, the steady improvement of technology over time is the “engine that drives” sustained
improvement in the nation’s economic well-being, allowing the production of more and better
output from any given endowment of economic resources. One manifestation of such
improvement will be a steady improvement of productivity. Another manifestation could be as an
improvement in the nation’s terms of trade, as strong international demand for new and improved
products increases their export price and raises the quantity of imports that a given volume of
exports exchange for.
What is the public policy issue here? Improving technology is largely a process of generating new
ideas. But the production of new ideas is likely an activity toward which the private market
system will allocate less than the socially desirable level of resources. To the extent that new
ideas lead to profitable outcomes and those profits can be secured by a private firm, the market
economy will generate new ideas and foster technological change. An inherent attribute of ideas,
however, is that they are non-rival, as my using the idea does not preclude someone else from
using it. Further, ideas will often have the attribute of limited excludability, meaning the owner of
the idea will find it difficult or impossible to charge a fee for its use. These attributes will likely
cause a divergence of private benefit and social benefit. (What the creator of the idea can expect
to gain will be less than what the overall economy can expect to gain.) In this situation less than
the socially desirable level of idea generation will occur. Therefore, this is an activity which may
warrant some level of government involvement and support if it is to be done on a socially
optimal scale.





This so-called market failure in idea production can be corrected by an appropriate amount of
public support for the idea creation process. Such support could include public funding of
research and development (R&D), particularly in the area of basic scientific research where the
prospect of market failure is the greatest; public funding for investment in human capital,
particularly education in the sciences and engineering where benefits of cumulative knowledge
often extend beyond the individual; and public support for mechanisms to establish and enforce
property rights, such as patent and copyright administration. Of course, these are activities that 4
the U.S. government does now. But the open question is whether such support is accurately
targeted and undertaken on an adequate scale. This is not an easy question to give a precise
answer to because the lack of a market price for the full benefits of the activity makes it difficult
to judge relative scarcity.
As regards spending on R&D, there is a considerable amount of economic evidence that the
social rate of return to R&D for a variety of research projects often greatly exceeds the private
rate of return, suggesting that too little research is being undertaken. (At optimal scale, research
projects would be undertaken to the point where the social rate of return has been pushed down to
the level of private return.) By some estimates, the level of investment undertaken by firms could 5
be as little as 25% of the level that would be economically optimal.
This said, we also observe that total R&D spending by industry and government as a percentage
of GDP has hovered around 2.5% of GDP for nearly 30 years. The overall steadiness of this
share, however, masks divergent paths for industry and government R&D spending. While the
dollar spending levels by industry and government have both increased, since the 1980s as a
percentage of GDP, industry’s share has risen and that of government has fallen. It is government
spending on R&D that largely provides support to basic research and this is an area where the
incidence of market failure in idea production is probably the greatest. Argument for public
support of the idea-creation process certainly transcends its possible impact on the nation’s terms
of trade, but it is one potentially significant aspect of the economic gains from steadily advancing
technology.
Trade policy comprises actions by government that attempt to directly influence trade
performance. The most basic manifestations of such policies are tariffs to protect domestic
industries from competition from imports and subsidies to promote exporting industries. These
actions may also affect the terms of trade.
Economic theory indicates that there can be a circumstance when imposing a tariff can improve
the nation’s terms of trade. By reducing the demand for imported goods, a tariff has a tendency to
decrease the price of imports. In the standard analysis this positive effect on the terms of trade (
as well as the positive effect on the protected industries) is most often outweighed by the costs of
the tariff to the wider economy brought about by the tariff’s distortion of consumption and

4 For a discussion of current federal programs, see CRS Issue Brief IB10088, Federal Research and Development:
Budgeting and Priority Setting Issues, 108th Congress, by Genevieve Knezo.
5 See Zvi Griliches, “The Search for R&D Spillovers,” Scandinavian Journal of Economics, (1991), pp. 29-47; Bruce
Smith and Claude Barfield. Technology, R&D , and the Economy (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1996); and
Charles I. Jones and John C. Williams, “Measuring the Social Return to R&D,The Quarterly Journal of Economics,
vol. 63, no.4, (Nov. 1998), pp. 1119-1136.





production incentives. But, if a tariff causes a sufficiently large reduction of the price of imported
foreign goods, the economic gain from the terms of trade improvement could outweigh the
distortion costs of the tariff and improve the imposing country’s economic well-being. The
economic concept of the “optimal tariff” relates to finding the tariff rate that would maximize this
favorable effect.
The export sector can also, in theory, be an avenue by which trade policy could induce a positive
terms of trade effect. Export subsidies, because they tend to lower export prices, will cause the
terms of trade to decrease. Therefore a positive effect on the terms of trade would require a
negative subsidy—or an export tax—that raises the price of exports. If this positive effect on the
terms of trade is large enough, then it may outweigh the negative effects that arise from the
distortion costs of the export tax. The “optimal” export tax is the tax rate that would maximize the
positive effect of this instrument on overall economic well-being.
In practice, however, trade policies that attempt to increase the economy’s terms of trade using
tariffs or export taxes are of doubtful practical value. First, these are policies that could have
potential relevance only for very large trading economies such as the United States, whose
exports and imports represent a large proportion of world wide sales and are, therefore, able to
influence the exports or imports price in the world market. Second, there is no reason be believe
that such price effects are particularly large. And third, if the potential gain is large or small, there
is every reason to believe that using these policy devices to generate terms of trade gains is not
very likely to be sustainable due to retaliation by other nations. If these trade policy devices are
used by the United States (or any nation) it would be a use of monopoly power to extract extra
gains from other trading nations. We can expect that this would not be a matter of indifference to
affected nations, quickly prompting retaliatory actions that would tend to not only erase any
initial economic gains to the United States, but reduce the economic well-being of all trading
nations if a cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation induces a large contraction of world trade.
While erecting trade barriers may not be a viable means to improve the terms of trade, reducing 6
barriers could be. For the United States, such a lowering of trade barriers could improve the U.S.
terms of trade for two reasons. First, because the level of U.S. trade barriers is already very low
relative to the level of many U.S. trading partners; therefore, a multilateral reduction or removal
of those barriers will likely have a stronger positive effect on the demand for U. S. exports than it
will on U.S. demand for imports, tending to increase export prices relative to import prices and
improve the U.S. terms of trade. Second, services trade is likely to be high on the agenda of the
new round of negotiations. The prospect of lower barriers to services trade may bode well for the
U.S. terms of trade. Services account for a much smaller share of U.S. trade than they do of GDP.
The United States is the world’s largest producer of services and it seems very likely that it could
export an array of strongly demanded products to the rest of the world. This can also lead to an
improvement in the terms of trade as that demand pulls up U.S. export prices.

6 The last large multilateral trade policy initiative was the Uruguay Round in 1994. However, preliminary negotiations
for a new round of reductions have occurred and a further multilateral lowering of trade barriers may be in the offing in
the years just ahead. For more on the current state of these negotiations and their likely agenda, see CRS Report
RL32060, World Trade Organization Negotiations: The Doha Development Agenda, by Ian F. Fergusson.





In theory there can be “special” industries, which, if given government nurturing, will grow to
generate large economic returns in the future. Without this public support, however, these special
industries will not emerge or will emerge at too small a scale. While there are many variants of
the argument for government promoting particular industries, two have some plausible economic
merit. One is support for industries that generate what economist call “positive externalities.”
This means that the firm’s or industry’s actions have the potential to generate substantial
economic benefits that spill over to other firms or sectors, but none or only a fraction of those
benefits can be appropriated by the initiating firm. The generation of new ideas is often the
activity of central economic importance for economic well-being. Yet, because an idea can have
limited excludability, it can be difficult for the firm to fully appropriate the economic benefits of
the idea it has created. The new idea may easily spill over to benefit other enterprises without
compensation accruing to its creators. In this environment, without government support the firm
will not have the incentive to invest in the knowledge-creating process at a level that the whole
society would find most economically beneficial.
The likely existence of significant positive externalities is a theoretically valid argument for 7
government support for an industry. In practice, however, it is a problematic endeavor. To be
economically effective, such support needs to be targeted at the knowledge that would not
otherwise be produced. This is likely a difficult task. Even if the right target is identified, it will
be virtually impossible to know what amount of support is called for because these types of
activities to not carry a market price from which to judge relative scarcity. A policy of support
runs the risk of being too blunt an instrument to just raise economic efficiency, as it is possible
that it creates other costly distortions. At the international level, knowledge nurtured at
considerable expense by one nation may be easily appropriable by industries in other nations,
tending to reduce any national advantage to accrue from supporting a special firm or industry.
The other theoretically valid argument for government promotion of a particular industry is based
on the possible existence of “strategic industries.” These are industries in which only a very few
firms would be able to operate profitably and each firm’s action will have strong repercussions on
the profit potential of other competitors. In this oligopolistic market structure, firms will likely
have a significant degree of monopoly power and the potential to earn above normal profits.
Capturing a large share of those profits would increase the home nation’s economic well-being. In
this environment, nations may be tempted to compete for those profits. Without government
support those profits will most likely be appropriated by the first few firms to establish
themselves in the industry. Subsequent entry by other firms would be deterred as they can only
expect to incur losses. Who enters and who is deterred can be influenced by the government of
one country making a strategic intervention that gives support with a subsidy sufficient to assure
that whether firms from other nations enter or not, its firm will earn a profit. Because any
unsubsidized firm would now earn losses, they will likely be deterred from entry. The
government intervention has thereby shifted potential profits from the foreign to the domestic
firm and raised economic well-being in the home economy.

7 For a discussion of the problematic success of industrial policy in practice in several industrial countries, see Paul
Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld, International Economics: Theory and Policy (New York, Harper-Collins, 1994), pp.
287-296.





Again, while it is conceptually possible for a strategic trade policy to raise national economic
well-being, its practical significance has been widely questioned by economists. Perhaps the
greatest doubt as to the efficacy of strategic trade policy is that the information required for the
government to successfully execute the policy most likely exceeds what would be readily
available. Economic theory indicates that the conditions needed for the execution of a successful
strategic trade policy are many and a favorable outcome will be extremely sensitive to small
deviations from any of those necessary conditions. This means that pursuing such a policy with
substantially incomplete information could easily result in subsidies supporting more inefficiency
than efficiency, and leading to more loss than profit.
Further, if large subsidies are to be handed out without all necessary information available, policy
makers can anticipate some politicization of the process and the rising probability that more
subsidies will be given than can be analytically justified. Success is likely to be even less
tractable if trading partners can be expected to retaliate against a policy that will clearly make
them worse off.
Finally, economic studies have suggested that even if the policy is well implemented, the realized
gains could be very small. For all these reasons, it is unlikely in practice that federal government
support of strategic industries would be a viable means for raising the terms of trade and overall 8
economic welfare.

The terms of trade can be a telling indicator of changes in the economy’s gains from international
trade. Changes in the terms of trade point to either an increment or decrement in real income.
While short-term changes are often offsetting and carry little significance, long-term trends can
point to significant enhancement or erosion of economic well-being. Nevertheless, the terms of
trade is unlikely to be at the center of most discussions of trade policy or macroeconomic policy
because it is not a variable that is easy to influence directly.
While there may be opportunities for a nation to use economic policy to directly influence its
terms of trade, these are unlikely to be exploitable tools. Because your gain is going to be at their
expense, other nations are likely to try to counter such policies. This is a situation that could all
too easily devolve into a vicious cycle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, shrinking the volume
of world trade and leaving all parties worse off.
Nevertheless, economic policy may be able to influence the economy’s terms of trade in a
favorable manner. It is most likely to do so indirectly, with positive effects on the terms of trade
emerging as a beneficial by-product of policies that support an “infrastructure” that generally
furthers the goal of vigorous economic growth. A number of economic policies are likely to raise
the probability (but certainly not assure) a favorable terms of trade effect. Macroeconomic
policies that minimize economic instability and nurture forward looking activities such as

8 For an appreciation of the evolution of thinking about strategic industries and economic policy by a trade economist
prominent in the development of the idea, see Paul Krugman, “Is Free Trade Passe?,Journal of Economic
Perspectives (fall 1987), pp. 131-141; and “Does the New Trade Theory Require a New Trade Policy, The World
Economy (July 1992), pp. 423-441. For a general survey of the issue, see Douglas A. Irwin, Against the Tide: an
Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 207-216.





investment and innovation, policies for focused public support of knowledge producing activities
that are very likely undervalued by the private market, and continued initiatives toward the
lowering of trade barriers at home and abroad are all likely to be important to developing such an
infrastructure. In this way terms of trade gains would likely be seen as emerging from a process
that has probably increased the gains to each trading partner (although not necessarily equally),
and thereby not seen by other nations as a “zero sum game” where our gain is their loss.
Craig K. Elwell
Specialist in Macroeconomic Policy
celwell@crs.loc.gov, 7-7757