Chinese Imports Research Articles

Effects of Chinese Import Competition on Self-employed Business Owners in the U.S.

Exploiting variation in exposure to Chinese import growth across U.S. local markets, I investigate the effects of import competition on self-employment between 1990 and 2014. I find Chinese import competition had negative effects on self-employment during the 1990s. However, the negative effects disappear after 2000. Indeed, Chinese import growth did not have any significant impact on self-employment in manufacturing, but had positive effects on self-employment in non-manufacturing sectors, mostly driven by incorporated self-employed individuals. I also find that the impact varies substantially across different groups characterized by gender, age, and education.

Section 301 and Politics: Analysis of Tariff Exemptions

Section 301 tariffs were imposed as a consequence of China's discriminatory business practices against American firms. However, domestic American firms who rely on Chinese imports are now faced with paying for these tariffs. In response, the Trump administration allowed the affected firms to apply for a tariff exclusions. In this paper, we investigate the factors affecting the approval rates for these tariff exclusions. We find that an increase in county Republican vote share by 10 percentage points results in a 10% increase in probability of tariff exclusion approval.

COVID-19, Plague, Planets, Conjunctions, Comets and the Chinese New Year

This paper opens with the first reporting of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in late 2019/early2020 and closes with the importance of the Chinese language for access to Chinese knowledge and culture; it reviews the scale of the pandemic after 12 months compared to earlier pandemics at the advent of the Chinese New Year on12/2/221; it comments on recent very close Great Conjunction of planets that had in the past been thought to be a source of human illness, on the impact of medical science (and vaccination) in control or elimination of disease and human suffering, on the "explosion" of scientific method in the Enlightenment and on Halley's observation of "his" comet and the calculation of its periodicity using Newton's maths, on the interest of the Greeks, Romans and Norsemen in the night sky, on human endurance and isolation in the face of illness and in pandemic and in literature (modern and much older, touching on the Great Plague 1665 and Daniel Defoe); it moves to the use of Greek literature by Schliemann in discovering Troy and then Mycenae, and on his inspiration of Arthur Evans in the discovery of Knossos, on the use of tree rings (and ice cores) by Professor Bailee to discover historical catastrophe coinciding with the collapse of Troy (1159BC) (and possible coincidence with Biblical Exodus (1628BC), the dawn of the Dark Ages in Europe (540AD) and the collapse of Chinese dynasties), and on his use of Chinese literature (and Irish mythology) to seek to correlate historical tales with facts, and likewise with the possible link of catastrophe in 540AD with Beowulf (effectively a method akin to Schliemann's use historical literature, the Iliad to discover Troy); it addresses Professor Bailee's initial theory of the correlation of severe volcanic eruption (notably Santorini) but moreover close cometary pass (or impact) with catastrophe (and perhaps consequent social and economic collapse and illness); it touches on notable observations of Halley's comet (at the collapse of Troy, at the time of the Great Plague in London 1664 (incidentally at the Battle of Hastings 1066)), on the huge, important catalogue of observations by the Chinese of the night sky going back 2,000 years or more (including 30 observations of Halley's comet); it touches lightly on other possible real effects of conjunctions (tidal effect at the time of Titanic), and throughout on the importance of language and books in the storing and transmission of knowledge and culture; it then looks at the spread of English as the global lingua franca (from 1945), on events and change in the English language at the time key literature (540AD Beowulf, 1175AD in Malory's Morte d/Artur (at the time of murder to Thomas A Beckett at Canterbury), in the Pardoner's Tale in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (and Chaucer's experience of pandemic in the Black Death (14th Century)), overall on books to read and knowledge to absorb whilst in COVID-19 lock down (inc references to the City of London where Chaucer lived for a time (in the Aldgate), where Pepys lived (Seething lane), where Pepys had observed the Great Plague and cometary pass, where Daniel Defoe describes the Great Plague and refers to comet, and close by where Dickens had observed the great maritime and business world (Dombey & Sons in 1846). Throughout the paper there are references to books to read in pandemic and lockdown for the power of the language (Moby Dick), for the extraordinary skill of brevity (the Old Man and the Sea), for the seminal description of modern plague (Camus, La Peste), for the magical quality of the tale (le Petit Prince, with its curious solar theme and 50 translation into Chinese), for the remarkable tale of Longitude (Dava Sobel), the link to the planets and the stars and the impact of Harrisons' clock's. It concludes with a light observation on the importance and durability of knowledge and ideas and the importance of learning Chinese, with a small comparison of the huge impact of ideas from the Greek classical world and its accessibility in the Greek language. A full set of references is provided.

An Innovation Study of Chinese Exports and Imports and Its Electrical Appliances on Economy

An Innovation Study of Chinese Exports and Imports and Its Electrical Appliances on Economy

Product Market Threats and Leases

We document that product market threats increase the use of leased capital. We use Chinese import penetration in an instrumental variables setting to address endogeneity concerns. The positive relation between product market threats and leases is larger for firms that are financially constrained, need financial flexibility, and most impacted by predation risk. In additional analyses, we find that the increased use of leases corresponds to a diminished effect of product market threats on investment, growth, and profitability. Collectively, the findings identify product market threats as a non-tax rate factor that increases the strategic use of leased capital.

Trade-Policy Dynamics: Evidence from 60 Years of U.S.-China Trade

We study the growth of Chinese imports into the United States from autarky during 1950-1970 to about 15 percent of overall imports in 2008, taking advantage of the rich heterogeneity in trade policy and trade growth across products during this period. Central to our analysis is an accounting for the dynamics of trade, trade policy, and trade-policy expectations. We isolate the lagged effects of past reforms and the current effects of uncertainty about future reforms. We build a multi-industry, heterogeneous-firm model with a dynamic export participation decision to estimate a path of trade-policy expectations. We find that being granted Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status in 1980 was largely a surprise and that, in the early stages, this reform had a high probability of being reversed. The likelihood of reversal dropped considerably during the mid 1980s, and, despite China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, changed little throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. Thus, although uncertainty depressed trade substantially following the 1980 liberalization, much of the trade growth that followed China's WTO accession was a delayed response to previous reforms rather than a response to declining uncertainty.

Political Shadows in the USA - China Trade Dispute

The start of the USA – China trade dispute was given on July 6, 2018 – when the United States introduced an additional 25% ad valorem duty on $34 billion of Chinese imports. The official reasons, mentioned in a Statement by the President, were to prevent the unfair transfers of U.S. intellectual property and technology to China, and to restore the balance in the trade relationship between the two countries. Whether tariffs – a key instrument from the trade policy toolkit – can be used effectively against (alleged) intellectual property theft is debatable, and their deployment toward the reduction of the massive merchandise goods deficit with China ($375.2 billion in 2017) is only a country-specific solution. Because of its relatively high labor costs, the U.S. does not have the comparative advantage to produce the vast majority of Chinese imports, and therefore the expected long-term effect of higher tariffs would be to reallocate parts of the trade deficit to other countries. The assumption that U.S. policymakers are unaware of this fact seems doubtful, and that brings us to the conjecture about the role of political considerations in the trade dispute. This paper looks at both the economic and the political aspects of the dispute, as it examines the deficit’s dynamics over the last 20 years (incl. its impact on U.S. employment and household median income), plus the possible political influences: the Belt – and – Road Initiative, the Chinese military build-up, and cyberespionage. The paper concludes with a short overview of the effect of U.S. tariffs on China’s GDP growth, exports, and trade balance during the 2018-2020 period.

The Economic Impacts of the Us-China Trade War

In 2018, the US launched a trade war with China, an abrupt departure from its historical leadership in integrating global markets. By late 2019, the US had tariffed roughly $350 billion of Chinese imports, and China had retaliated on $100 billion US exports. Economists have used a diversity of data and methods to assess the impacts of the trade war on the US, China and other countries. This article reviews what we have learned to date from this work.

How Do Low-Skilled Immigrants Adjust to Chinese Import Shocks? Evidence Using English Language Proficiency

This paper examines the link between trade-induced changes in local labor market opportunities and English language fluency rates among low-skilled immigrants in the United States. Many of the production-based manufacturing jobs lost in recent years due to Chinese import competition did not require strong English-speaking skills while many of the jobs in expanding industries, mostly in the service sector, did. Consistent with responses to these changing labor market opportunities, we find that a $1,000 increase in import exposure per worker in a local area led to an increase in the share of low-skilled immigrants speaking English very well in that area by about half a percentage point. As evidence that at least part of this is a result of actual improvements in English language speaking abilities, we show that low-skilled immigrants in trade-impacted areas became especially likely to be enrolled in school compared to similarly low-skilled natives. However, while we find little support for selective domestic migration in response to trade shocks, we present evidence suggesting that new immigrants arriving from abroad choose where to settle based either on their English fluency or their ability to learn English. Regardless of whether low-skilled immigrants respond to trade shocks via actual improvements in English fluency or migration choices, our results suggest that immigrants help to equilibrate labor markets, an implication we find evidence for in the data.

Do Rules of Origin Extend Disproportionate Trade Gains Under SAFTA: A Case Study of Bicycle and Textile Industries

Rules of Origin (RoO) have become an important area of policy attention in international trade negotiations due to their far-reaching trade and investment implications to member countries. The main function of RoO in free trade agreements (FTAs) is to set conditions so that goods produced within FTAs comply with the essential origin criterion to claim the benefits of preferential market access and to prevent the entry of goods from non- FTA partners. The rising cases of disproportionate trade benefits have compelled countries to review their RoO provisions under different trade agreements. Additionally, the disproportionate benefit of RoO under the South Asia Free Trade (SAFTA) has received considerable interest in the recent years. This article examines how RoO under the SAFTA is extending unwarranted trade benefit to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in bicycle and textile and clothing industries. Findings backed by data analysis demonstrate that the entry of Chinese imports into the Indian market via Bangladesh and Sri Lanka is adversely affecting the domestic bicycle and garment industries. Options available to revamp RoO under the SAFTA are limited. This article concludes that reforming value addition criterion and including a ‘sourcing restrictions’ clause may prove effective to prevent the unjustifiable benefits of RoO. RoO, regional value chains, trade policy, free trade agreements, trade agreements, SAFTA

The Impact of Chinese Import Competition on Italian Manufactoring

This paper documents the effects of increased import competition from China on the Italian labour market. In line with recent studies (Autor et al., 2013, 2014), we take two complementary approaches and study the effects on both local labour markets and manufacturing workers. Our analysis shows that Italy’s local labour markets, which were more exposed to Chinese trade because of their industry composition, ended up suffering larger manufacturing and overall employment losses. Nevertheless, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the aggregate effect on total manufacturing employment is modest. At the individual level, contrary to what has been documented for many developed countries, workers initially employed in more exposed manufacturing industries did not suffer long-term losses in terms of lower earnings or more discontinuous careers. While they were indeed less likely than other similar workers to continue working in manufacturing, they were also able to carry out successful transitions towards the non-tradable sector, in other areas with better job opportunities.

Mis-Allocation within Firms: Internal Finance and International Trade

We develop a novel theory of mis-allocation within firms (rather than between firms) due to managers' empire building. We introduce an internal capital market into a two-factor model of multi-segment firms. We show that more open markets impose discipline on competition for capital within firms, which explains why exporters exhibit a lower conglomerate discount than non-exporters (a fact that we establish). Testing our model with data on US companies, we establish that import competition reduces mis-allocation within firms. A one standard deviation increase in Chinese imports lowers the conglomerate discount by 32% and over-reporting of costs by up to 15%.

Does Import Competition from China Discipline Overconfident CEOs in U.S. Firms?

We examine how the trade shock from China influences the behavior and investment performance of overconfident CEOs in U.S. firms. We show that the rise of Chinese import competition curbs investments and improves investment value and acquisition performance for firms with overconfident CEOs. Intensified Chinese product competition also reduces the incentives for these firms to expand assets, invest out of cash flows, pursue aggressive financial policies, and increase risk exposure, and enhances their incentives to buy back shares. Overall, the evidence suggests that product market competition is an effective external governance mechanism for curbing the adverse effects of managerial overconfidence.

Blockchain‐based traceability and demand for U.S. beef in China

AbstractAmid stringent traceability requirements and a nearly 14‐year ban, the U.S. beef industry is rebuilding its market presence in China. Blockchain technology offers a responsive means of meeting Chinese import traceability requirements while also addressing consumers' food safety concerns. We evaluate Chinese demand for U.S. beef and blockchain‐based traceability and find that a sizeable segment of the market (37%) is willing to pay a premium for U.S. beef that is traceable using blockchains. Results indicate that investments in traceability systems that utilize blockchain technology may be an effective way for producers to capture a significant market share in China.

Trade Competition and Worker Compensation: Why Do Some Receive More than Others?

Abstract Dealing with the distributional consequences of trade liberalization has become one of the key challenges facing developed democracies. Governments have created compensation programs to ease labor market adjustment, but these resources tend to be distributed highly unevenly. What accounts for the variation? Looking at the largest trade adjustment program in existence, the US’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), we argue that petitions for compensation are largely driven by legislative attitudes. When legislators express negative views of TAA, individuals in their districts become less likely to petition for, and receive, compensation. This effect is especially pronounced in Republican districts. An underprovision of TAA, in turn, renders individuals more likely to demand other forms of government support, like in-kind medical benefits. We use roll-call votes, bill sponsorships, and floor speeches to measure elite attitudes, and we proxy for the demand for trade adjustment using economic shocks from Chinese import competition. In sum, we show how the individual beliefs of political elites can be self-fulfilling.

COVID‐19 and cotton import demand in China

AbstractAs the leading import market for cotton, and leading export market for manufactured products like clothing and apparel, China provides the ideal case for examining how the COVID‐19 pandemic is affecting international cotton trade. The COVID‐19 outbreak has resulted in decreased global demand for products like clothing, directly affecting China's demand for cotton from exporting countries. In this study, we examined Chinese demand for imported cotton by product form (raw cotton and yarn) and by source (e.g., United States, India), as well as the dynamic price relationships across countries. Using year‐to‐date trade, demand estimates, and price forecasts, we assessed the impact of COVID‐19 on Chinese imports and the countries supplying this market. Depending on the projections, the most severe impacts of COVID‐19 on Chinese cotton imports are either behind us, or the latter half of 2020 could potentially be just as bad as the early part of the year. The outcome depends on the impact of manufactured‐product prices on imports; the effects of which are large but insignificant. As a consequence, even when imports from certain countries are projected to significantly decline, projection intervals suggest the possibility of a negligible decline or even a positive outcome.

The impact of emerging market competition on innovation and business strategy: Evidence from Canada

Does intensifying emerging market competition boost or inhibit innovation? We estimate how a representative panel of Canadian firms adjusts innovation activities, business strategies, and exit in response to large increases in Chinese import competition. Our analysis shows that the innovation response of firms depends on the type of innovation: on average, product innovation incentives are stimulated by competition while process innovation incentives decline. We develop a theory that combines these different innovation types with partially irreversible innovation strategy choices to derive novel performance implications in response to competition. Consistent with this theory, we find that firms that initially pursue process innovation strategies and survive have higher profits ex-post, but are ex-ante more likely to exit. In contrast, firms that initially pursue product innovation strategies have higher profits if they survive, without significant impact on exit. Both empirical patterns are consistent with our theory, which suggests that innovator performance depends on the balance of innovation incentive effects and competitive failure risk.

Trade liberalization and child labor

This paper exploits a quasi-natural experiment – the U.S. granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China after China's accession to the World Trade Organization – to examine whether trade liberalization affects the incidence of child labor. PNTR permanently set U.S. duties on Chinese imports at low Normal Trade Relations (NTR) levels and removed the uncertainty associated with annual renewals of China's NTR status. We find that the PNTR was significantly associated with the rising incidence of child labor in China. A one percentage point reduction in expected export tariffs raises the odds of child labor by a 1.2 percentage point. The effects are greater for girls, older children, rural children, and children with less-educated parents. The effect of trade liberalization on the incidence of child labor, however, tends to weaken in the long run, probably because trade liberalization can induce exporters to upgrade technology and thus have less demand for unskilled workers.

A game theory application in the copper market

Mongolia has a small open economy that is growing due to its status as one of the major copper exporters in the Asian copper market. We used game theory to analyze the Chinese copper market and determine the competitive strategies used by Mongolian exporters. We show that a variational inequality approach is one option to prove that game theory is applicable in the analysis of the Chinese copper market, as it is spatial and concentrated. To solve the profit maximization problem with a concave objective function for each player and linear strategy set, it can be reduced to variational inequalities. Numerical calculations allow us to predict the responses of certain parameters against external factors or so-called non-economic shocks, such as changes in Chinese import policies, strikes in Chile, etc. In the future, if Mongolia builds a new copper smelter, it will be a competitor within a more concentrated market than that of the current copper concentrate trade. Thus, the importance of developing such a model is increasing.

Consequences of COVID-19 on Imports and Exports of China with Forecasted Error and Future Trends

Purpose- The primary motivation behind this paper is to break down results of Coronavirus on imports and fares of China with anticipated mistake and future patterns. Design/methodology/approach - The paper depends on an Auto Backward Coordinated Moving Normal model with explicit suggestion of Box and Jenkins approach each year complete assessment of imports and fares of China as of the year 1950-2016 through supportive quantifiable programming R. It is found that ARIMA (0, 2, 2) and ARIMA (0, 2, 1) model appear to be to be sensible to measure full scale yearly imports and fares of China independently. Findings - After the control of COVID plague Chinese imports and fares will extend a tiny bit at a time and after the skirmish of three years get the figure (153609.6) in 2022, it will get the figure (153096.8) of 2019. After 2022, the advancement movement of Chinese imports and fares will be extended in a reliably close about a comparative rate before the attack of novel COVID. Research limitations/implications - The foremost restriction of the research work it is merely support on secondary data. Practical implications - The scientist can utilize these models for determining yearly imports and fares of China. Any way it ought to be refreshed opportunity to time with a consolidation of current information. It is most significant that the scientist ought to consistently follow the guideline of stinginess and attempt to fit straightforward model rather than model with enormous boundaries. Originality/value - The uniqueness of this article is that it features the select models for gauging import and fare of China. It was discovered that AIC based model determination methods provided ARIMA models with request (0, 2, 2) and request (0, 2, 1) for imports and fares of China separately were proper and helps in advancing money related incorporation with brings about higher monetary development and unfamiliar financial specialists.