Taken to the Cleaners, Again

A tariff on imports of coat hangers from China is raising dry cleaning costs.  The Aplia Econ blog runs the numbers:

Advocates of trade restrictions often argue that protection will save
jobs. Since we can observe price and cost increases associated with
trade restrictions, we can estimate how much it costs to save each job
in a protected industry. According to the NPR story, there are roughly
30,000 dry cleaners in the U.S., and on average, each pays an
additional $4,000 per year due to the hanger tariff. This indicates an
average annual cost of 30,000 firms x $4,000 per firm = $120 million.
According to the U.S. International Trade Commission’s report,
U.S. employment in wire hanger manufacturing was 564 workers in 2004
and fell to 236 workers by 2006. Let’s assume that employment in this
sector would have fallen to zero in the absence of the tariff, and that
with the tariff, employment will recover to 2004 levels. In other
words, assume the tariff "saves" 564 jobs. Dividing the cost of the
tariff to U.S. dry cleaners ($120 million year) by the number of jobs
saved (564 jobs) indicates that each job saved costs about $212,765 per
year. Keep in mind that the typical full-time worker in this sector
earns about $30,000 per year. Even if we assume that industry
employment doubles, the cost of the tariff is still roughly $120,000
per job.

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