Protectionism in Saudi
Saudi Arabia currently has a vast variety of tariffs (or duties) implemented on many different types of agricultural and industrial products. I however looked more specifically into the tariffs implemented on specific dates and flour. According to "export.gov", there is a 40 percent import tariff rate that is applied to fresh, dried/processed dates and 25 percent on wheat flour. This means that the Saudi government charges other foreign producers a certain percent of their retail price for the said product upon entry into their country. This is a tactic used by the Saudi government in order to protect domestic producers from larger foreign producers as well as to generate more income for the government, thus creating more opportunities for further investment in their infrastructure/economy. The theoretical results of these tariffs shown on the graph are as follows: The domestic producers of flour and wheat are the biggest beneficiaries of these tariffs as it makes it more ex...