Trade and Welfare Effects of Export Tax : Theory and Evidence from China's Incomplete Export Vat Rebate

While China reduced tariffs as part of the WTO accession process, it also reduced the rebates of the value added tax (VAT) for exporters. We use a multi-sector multi-country Ricardian model to examine the extent to which these de facto export tax changes benefited China and nullified the benefits to the rest of the world of China’s trade liberalization. We show that trade liberalization benefited China’s trade partners both through an improvement in their terms of trade and through a reallocation of resources from protected imported sectors to exportable sectors. We find that the partial rebate policy on VAT exports provided a small effect overall on the welfare of China and trading partners, although some countries lost as much as 2/3 of their gain from China’s tariff reductions. We show that some export taxes moved toward China’s optimal export taxes while others moved away, mitigating the welfare effect on China