DOI: 10.32609/j.ruje.11.168943

Authors: Irina V. Kryachko, Henry I. Penikas

Abstract: In April 2025, the United States abruptly announced exceptionally high tariffs on imports from more than 180 countries (levels not seen in nearly 150 years) shocking the global economy. Within a week, most measures were postponed for 90 days (until July 9, 2025), but tariffs on Chinese goods were retained and, immediately prior to implementation, were raised to as high as 145%. China responded by increasing tariffs on U.S. goods to 125%. U.S. equity markets fell by about 10% in the week following the announcement but nearly recovered in May amid speculation that the measures might be withdrawn. By August 2025, headline U.S–China tariff rates converged to roughly 55% and 33%, respectively. Notably, neither country raised duties on Russian imports. Existing assessments (e.g., Yale Budget Lab) focus primarily on the United States. We extend the analysis to Russia and to as many large economies as global input–output tables allow. Using both aggregate and highly disaggregated inter-industry and cross-country linkages within a Leontief framework, we obtain U.S. effects comparable to prior estimates, while the estimated impact on Russian prices and output is negligible. Because substitution and trade rerouting are excluded from the baseline, our results should be interpreted as conservative, lower-bound estimates.

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DOI: 10.32609/j.ruje.7.58034

Authors: Harald Hagemann

Abstract: Wassily Leontief jun. (1905–1999) moved to Berlin in April 1925 after getting his first academic degree from the University of Leningrad. In Berlin he mainly studied with Werner Sombart and Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz who were the referees of his Ph.D. thesis “The economy as a circular flow” (1928). From spring 1927 until April 1931 Leontief was a member of the research staff at the Kiel Institute of World Economics, interrupted by the period from April 1929 to March 1930 when he was an advisor to the Chinese Ministry of Railroads. In the journal of the Kiel Institute, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, Leontief had already published his first article “Die Bilanz der russischen Volkswirtschaft. Eine methodologische Untersuchung” [The balance of the Russian economy. A methodological investigation] in 1925. In Kiel Leontief primarily worked on the statistical analysis of supply and demand curves. Leontief’s method triggered a fierce critique by Ragnar Frisch, which launched a heavy debate on “pitfalls” in the construction of supply and demand curves. The debate started in Germany but was continued in the USA where Leontief became a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in summer 1931. The Leontief–Frisch controversy culminated in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (1934), published by Harvard University, where Leontief made his subsequent career from 1932–1975. His later analysis of the employment consequences of technological change in the 1980s had some roots in his Kiel period.

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