Abstract Prior to the recent resurgence prompted by the US–China trade war, tariffs on international trade had been consistently diminishing over the past few decades. In response, advanced countries increasingly turned to non-tariff measures (NTMs) to protect their industries from foreign competition. In this article, we exploit a novel database on NTMs to investigate their impact on the labor market in the United States. We use the political importance of an industry, measured by its employment share in swing states during presidential elections, as an instrumental variable for NTM protection. Our results suggest that NTMs mitigate the adverse employment effects resulting from exposure to Chinese import competition, but exert a negative influence on manufacturing wages, particularly for skilled workers.