252 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES
country on the other, instead of the producers of the one
country in the case of the export bounty, and the consumers
of all importing countries, This case is so clearly that of
the converse of a tax on import, that the statement at the
end of the preceding paragraph is clearly justified in this,
as in that instance,
An export duty, again, affects the relations between the
producers of the exporting country and the consumers of
all importing countries, and is the converse of an export
bounty. Suppose such a duty newly imposed. If it were
wholly borne by the producers of the taxed goods, the
consumers would be unaffected, for at an unchanged price
their demand would be neither diminished nor increased.
Producers would only submit to this if the reduction of
output, with such rise of price as might be thus induced,
involved a greater sacrifice than the maintenance of output
at the old price less the duty. For the maintenance of
supply with the added burden on producers, it is necessary
to suppose that all the sources of supply have previously
afforded a profit sufficiently in excess of the amount of the
duty for the reduction of profit not to compel the reduction
or cessation of output from even the least profitable of these
sources of supply. If, on the other hand, the export duty
were added to the price, so as to fall entirely on consumers,
it is not possible, in general, to conceive of no reduction of
demand, even if there were no other source of supply of the
taxed commodity. Any reduction of the amount demanded
will operate to force a reduction in the new price, that is,
to make it higher than the old by an amount less than the
tax. The difference constitutes a burden on producers.
Thus, here again, the argument points to a division of the
burden. The more sharply the demand is checked by a
rise of price, the smaller the proportion of the tax which can
be made to rest on consumers, The less the production is
affected by reduction of profit, the greater the proportion of
the burden which will rest on the producers. This conclusion
 can be strengthened by following out the details of
a similar examination of the effects of the removal of an
export duty, Since the export duty is the converse of an