We study how trade-policy dynamics affect the dynamics of trade volumes and the implications of these effects for estimates of the trade elasticity. We use data on US imports and trade policy from 1974-2017 for China and Vietnam--the countries with the largest import growth and the largest...

We use the dynamics of U.S. imports across goods in the period around the U.S.-China trade war with a model of exporter dynamics to estimate the dynamic path of the probability of transiting between Normal Trade Relations and a trade war state. We find (i) there was no increase in the likelihood...