Impact of Global Supply Chain Pressure on International Trade: Evidence from Turkey’s Container Traffic

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I aimed to econometrically determine the reflection of pressure-increasing events in the global supply chain on the container traffic in Turkish ports, since any disruption or pressure can have negative consequences such as shortages and high prices for consumers, a decline in profitability for companies, reduced job opportunities for workers, a slowdown in economic growth for countries, and a slowdown in trade for the world. I used the Global Supply Chain Pressure Index (GSCPI) to model the impact of events occurring in the global supply chain, and the export and import container traffic at Turkish ports. Instead of examining the relationship between the variables over the whole sample, I used the time-varying causality analysis, which makes it possible to detect the relationship at different periods in time by analyzing it with the rolling window approach. The dataset includes 230 monthly observations and covers the period between January 2004 and February 2023. The pressure in the supply chain differs according to export and import container loads. The Russia–Ukraine war, the Suez Canal closure, economic sanctions between the U.S. and China, economic crisis, geopolitical conflicts, hurricanes, and port congestion in the U.S. all affected the traffic in Turkish ports. Since this research was conducted with a time-varying approach and the GSCPI variable successfully represented many global supply chain events, it was possible to examine which events affected international trade through a single variable. Thus, event-based assessments become possible instead of just saying that supply chain pressure affects international trade.