The impact of US tariffs against China on US imports: evidence for trade diversion?

Simone Cigna, Philipp Meinen, Patrick Schulte and Nils Steinhoff

No 2503, Working Paper Series from European Central Bank

Abstract: In this paper we provide evidence on the existence of short-run trade diversion effects towards third countries as a consequence of tariff shocks. We exploit sudden policy changes in the context of the trade dispute between the US and China. Based on a data set covering monthly product-level information on US imports from 30 countries for the period January 2016 until May 2019, we employ a difference-in-differences estimation framework. Doing so, we (1) can confirm previous findings showing a strong negative direct effect of US tariffs on US imports from China, but (2) do not find evidence for significant short-run trade diversion effects towards third countries. This latter finding holds for product and country subgroups as well as for a variety of robustness checks. JEL Classification: F13, F14, F61

Keywords: difference-in-differences; product-level data; tariffs; trade diversion; US imports (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-int
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of US tariffs against China on US imports: Evidence for trade diversion? (2022)
Working Paper: The impact of US tariffs against China on US imports: Evidence for trade diversion? (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecb:ecbwps:20202503

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