Fast and Furious: Daily Export Responses to the Liberation Day Tariff Shock

How rapidly can firms re-time international shipments when faced with sudden changes in trade policy? We provide new evidence on this high-frequency adjustment margin using the United States’ Liberation Day tariffs (LDT) as an unexpected policy shock, together with confidential daily customs data from Thailand. Our identification strategy exploits a novel shift–share exposure measure, the "LDT gap," which captures product-level variation at the HS6 level in relative tariff increases faced by Thai exporters. We find that exporters adjust within days: products with higher LDT gaps experience increases in export values and quantities, with no statistically significant change in export prices, and these responses are mainly concentrated in the announcement period. The effects are stronger for agricultural than for manufacturing products. Across product use categories, the strongest responses are observed among consumer goods. The paper provides the first daily-frequency evidence on rapid shipment reallocation under sudden policy shocks and introduces a transparent exposure measure for identifying heterogeneous effects.