Disapproval rating, VIX index, COVID-19 cases and Trump’s tweeting against China

Kun Lang and Alexander Xincheng Li

Applied Economics Letters, 2022, vol. 29, issue 14, 1306-1312

Abstract: The primary goal of this paper is to provide empirical evidence for how non-trade factors attribute to the China-US trade war. Trump’s tweets provide us with a unique perspective. After analysing 31,166 Trump’s tweets, we have the following findings: (1) It’s non-trade factors rather than trade-related factors that can significantly predict whether Trump posts negative tweets involving China’s economic and trade issues. For every 1$$\% $$% increase in Trump’s disapproval rating and VIX index, the likelihood of Trump posting negative tweets involving China’s economic and trade issues increases by 0.61$$\% $$% and 0.16$$\% $$% respectively. (2) Tweeting against China sometimes becomes a tool to divert domestic criticism. After the COVID-19 outbreak, the higher growth rate of cumulative COVID-19 confirmed cases, the higher likelihood of Trump tweeting against China. (3) Tweeting against China can win public support and attention. Holding everything else constant, the number of likes and retweets of negative tweets about China are 10.2$$\% $$% and 14.6$$\% $$% more than those of positive tweets about China.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13504851.2021.1927956 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:apeclt:v:29:y:2022:i:14:p:1306-1312

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2021.1927956

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().