Peter Landers

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Tripti Lahiri |Ryan Dube |Peter Landers

South Korea’s Kia and Hyundai vehicles are among the top selling worldwide. (Kim gong-Ji/Reuters)Seoul showed that tariffs and other protectionist policies, in rare cases, can have desired results. A half-century ago, Hyundai Motors was little known, a company protected by a virtual ban on imported cars and then high tariffs.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Tripti Lahiri |Ryan Dube |Peter Landers

Garment workers at a factory in southern India. (Samuel Rajkumar/Reuters)India, in the decades after its 1947 independence from Britain, went with an import-substitution policy—which sought to replace imports with locally produced goods—designed to create homegrown factories by leveling high tariffs. The plan failed to create a vibrant high-growth economy. Then, in the two decades following a financial crisis in 1991, India dropped tariffs to an average of 13% from 125% on trade partners.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Tripti Lahiri |Ryan Dube |Peter Landers

Nigeria is Africa’s fourth-biggest economy. (Marvellous Durowaiye/Reuters)Africa’s fourth-biggest economy has an average tariff of 12% across all products, with effective duties of 70% or more on luxury goods, alcohol, and tobacco and similar products, the International Trade Administration says. Nigerian smugglers have taken advantage, sneaking in everything from rice to cars—items that, despite trade protections, Nigeria still doesn’t produce in quantities sufficient to satisfy the local market.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Tripti Lahiri |Ryan Dube |Peter Landers

Argentina’s central bank in Buenos Aires. (Agustin Marcarian/Reuters)Argentina walled off much of its economy in the hope of fostering homegrown factories when the Great Depression hammered what had been one of the world’s richest countries. In the ensuing decades, successive populist leaders—from Gen.

2 weeks ago | wsj.com | Peter Landers

An electronic board displays the Nikkei Stock Average in Tokyo on Monday. (Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP/Getty Images)Japan’s exchange operator briefly called a halt to trading in Nikkei stock futures on Monday morning because of a sharp fall triggered by President Trump’s tariffs. The “circuit breaker” system calls for a 10-minute pause in trading when the widely traded Nikkei 225 futures product is poised to rise or fall more than 8%.