ABSTRACT
Some of the earliest empirical literature on protectionism in the US focused on the relationship between US tariffs and labor intensity. It was concerned with the question of whether US trade policies tended to protect labor in manufacturing industries. These works rested on the intuition of the Stolper-Samuelson Theorem (1941) that protectionism tends to favor the factor of production used relatively intensively by an industry. Studies, found evidence that tariff rates in the US vary positively with labor intensity. Baldwin (1971) also argued this point stating that, if all trade regulations were removed, the capital intensity of import-competing industries in the US would probably go down. The objective of many of the studies of the International Trade Commission (ITC) has seemingly been to determine fluctuations in pressure and whether or not protectionist pressures have had an effect on US policy.
