Is the U.S. Being Ripped Off in Trade?

U.S. Trade Protectionism Compared to the World According to Three Rankings

Apr 24, 2025

Is the U.S. being ripped off in trade by our international trading partners? There are three readily available indices we can use to examine this (a nod to Phil Magness whose article inspired this one). They are 1) Trade Freedom from the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, 2) Freedom to Trade Internationally from the Fraser Economic Freedom of the World Report, and 3) Weighted Mean Tariff Applied from the World Trade Organization. The first two are the best metrics because they also include non-tariff barriers.

Here is how the U.S. ranks according to these rankings (full rankings and definitions of what is included in their measures are listed below):

So, no, the U.S. is not being ripped off in international trade compared to the world. Rather, these indices indicate the opposite: the U.S. is taking advantage of the world! However, not all countries have the income to purchase our high-end exports. The World Bank classifies countries by income. The threshold for high income is very low, just below $14,000 GNI per capita (using 2022 data for my comparison to the Fraser Economic Freedom of the World Data). But this gives us a very generous indicator for the countries that could afford our high-end exports.

How does the U.S.’s freedom to trade internally compare to just high-income countries? We are 43rd of 54 high-income countries. Again, indicating, that if we want to pursue reciprocity, especially with our major trading partners, the United States should be cutting, not raising, our tariffs and non-tariff barriers.