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in the 141,736 cases in which the U.S. charges the higher tariff, the average US. applied rate is only 8.7 percentage points higher than the average applied tariff of the foreign partner.

Separately, Communist China levies higher tariffs on 10 products for every one Chinese product that is subject to a U.S.-applied higher tariff." India’s ratio is even higher at 13 to one. Further, both Communist China and India also feature significant nontariff barriers. Collectively, these higher nonreciprocal tariffs in Communist China and India block American exporters from selling goods at competitive prices to more than one-third of the world’s population.

Trade Deficit Impacts of the U.S. Reciprocal Trade Act. Under current United States laws and regulations, an American President has limited ability to fight back against the higher MFN tariffs now being levied against American workers, farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers. Accordingly, behind the WTO’s protective MFN shield, America’s free-riding trading partners have little or no incentive to come to the bargaining table to negotiate lower tariffs.

To address this nonreciprocity stalemate, President Trump urged Congress in his 2019 State of the Union address to pass the United States Reciprocal Trade Act (USRTA).” Under the USRTA, the President would have the authority to bring any American trading partner that is currently applying higher nonreciprocal tariffs to the negotiating table. If that trading partner refused to lower tariffs to U.S. levels, the President then would have the authority to raise U.S. tariffs to match or “mirror” the foreign partner’s tariffs.

The USRTA was introduced on January 24, 2019, by then-Representative Sean Duffy (R-WD. The following month, a Harvard-Harris poll of 1,792 registered voters found that 80 percent of respondents supported the USRTA." As Representative Duffy noted at the time, the purpose of granting the President these authorities was not to raise tariffs. Rather, it was to give the President, working in close consultation with Congress, a sophisticated and targeted tool that he could use to force other countries to lower their tariffs and nontariff barriers."*

Following the introduction of the USRTA, the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (which the author directed) ran simulations to estimate the impact that implementation of the USRTA might have on the overall U.S. trade deficit in goods and the large bilateral trade deficits the U.S. runs with many of its major trading partners. The sample consisted of the same 132 trading partners used in Table 2 above." The results underscore the unfair and unbalanced nonreciprocal trade the U.S. is forced to accept under WTO MFN rules.

Two Scenarios. Scenario One in Table 3 assumes that our trading partners lower their applied tariff rates on specific products to U.S. levels in cases where their applied tariffs are higher. Scenario Two assumes that our trading partners refuse to lower their tariff rates to match those of the U.S. Instead, in order to uphold the principle of reciprocity, the U.S. raises its tariffs to mirror levels. To