Trade restriction indices and US trade policy

The proper way to measure differences in trade protection across countries and economic sectors has been a vexing problem for economists studying international trade. Based on research by Anderson and Neary (2005) and Kee et al. (KNO) (2009), this article proposes the use of Trade Restriction Indices (TRIs) when studying US trade policy. TRIs can potentially solve several problems related to measuring the restrictiveness of trade policy. To this end, this article creates a data set of TRIs for US imports by sector at several different levels of aggregation using the Harmonized Tariff Schedule (HS), the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) and the Standard International Trade Classification industry coding systems.