Trade Policy Uncertainty (TPU) Index


Overview and Paper

Dario Caldara, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo construct a monthly index of Trade Policy Uncertainty (TPU Index) by counting the frequency of joint occurrences of trade policy and uncertainty terms across major newspapers. The TPU index spikes initially in the 1970s following the Nixon and Ford “shocks” to U.S. trade policy. There are additional increases in TPU resulting from trade tensions with Japan in the 1980s and around the NAFTA negotiations in the mid-1990s. TPU reaches unprecedented levels beginning after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and spikes several times in response to heightened tensions between the U.S. and its trading partners, notably China and Mexico.

The paper “The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty” constructs three measures of TPU based on newspaper coverage, firms’ earnings conference calls, and aggregate data on tariff rates. The paper documents that increases in TPU reduce investment and activity using both firm-level and aggregate data. The paper interprets the empirical results through the lens of a two-country general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities and firms’ export participation decisions. In the model as in the data, news and increased uncertainty about higher future tariffs reduce investment and activity.

Cite the paper as: Caldara, Dario, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo (2020), “The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 109, pp.38-59.
A technical appendix for the paper and the latest presentation slides are available.

The FEDS Note “Does Trade Policy Uncertainty Affect Global Economic Activity?” uses evidence on the joint movements in TPU, industrial production, and other macroeconomic and financial variables in order to provide an estimate of the effects of the 2018-2019 spikes in TPU on U.S. GDP, as well as GDP in advanced foreign economies (AFEs) and emerging market economies (EMEs).

Cite the FEDS Note as: Caldara, Dario, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo, “Does Trade Policy Uncertainty Affect Global Economic Activity?,” September 4 2019.


Description

The TPU index is based on automated text searches of the electronic archives of seven newspapers: Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Guardian, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. The measure is calculated by counting the monthly frequency of articles discussing trade policy uncertainty (as a share of the total number of news articles) for each newspaper. The index is then normalized to a value of 100 for a one percent article share. The TPU Index starts in 1960.


Data

Download our aggregate TPU data here [Monthly data last updated April 1, 2025, daily data last updated April 4, 2025]
Download the firm-level TPU data (“tpuashare”) used in the JME paper here
Download the replication codes for the firm-level analysis in the JME paper here
These data can be used freely with attribution to the authors, the paper, and the website.
Cite as: Caldara, Dario, Matteo Iacoviello, Patrick Molligo, Andrea Prestipino, and Andrea Raffo (2020), “The Economic Effects of Trade Policy Uncertainty,” Journal of Monetary Economics, 109, pp.38-59.

(When using the data, we suggest referring to both the website and the date of download; e.g. “Data downloaded from https://www.matteoiacoviello.com/tpu.htm on Month DD, YYYY”).

Note: The latest data are preliminary and subject to revisions since some newspapers are added to the search database with delay. Additionally, in some cases there could be minor revisions of the data extending further back when duplicate or missing articles or newspaper editions are removed from or added to the database.


Trade Policy Uncertainty: Charts


Note : Move the slider below the chart to zoom in on a specific date range. Click and drag a square around any area to zoom in further. Double click the chart to zoom back out. Select or deselect individual series to compare TPU indexes. Double click to isolate one series and again to select all series.

Monthly Chart : In the monthly chart, the data for each month are assigned to the first day of the month. For instance, a reading of TPU=95.83 on August 1, 1971 means that TPU was 95.83 throughout the entire month of August 1971.


Code


Model replication codes here

These data can be used freely with attribution to the authors, the paper, and the website.

The latest version of the paper can be found here


Citations

  1. Monetary Policy Report to Congress (July 5, 2019)
  2. Wall Street Journal (September 5, 2019)
  3. Reuters (September 5, 2019)
  4. Bloomberg (September 5, 2019)
  5. Washington Post (September 6, 2019)
  6. Politico (September 6, 2019)
  7. Arirang News (September 6, 2019)
  8. Wall Street Journal (Editorial) (September 6, 2019)
  9. Deutsche Bank (September 6, 2019)
  10. Business Times (September 6, 2019)
  11. Market Watch (September 9, 2019)
  12. Wall Street Window (September 10, 2019)
  13. Foreign Affairs (September 10, 2019)
  14. Forbes (September 10, 2019)
  15. Econbrowser (September 13, 2019)
  16. Financial Times (September 15, 2019)
  17. Forbes (September 22, 2019)
  18. Il Sole 24 Ore (Italian) (September 27, 2019)
  19. Seattle Times (September 29, 2019)
  20. New York Times (October 8, 2019)
  21. PBS News Hour (October 11, 2019)

License: All the material in this webpage, including interactive visualizations and code, are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.
This webpage is maintained by Lilliana Wells, Will Yang, Sam Nate, and Matteo Iacoviello.