The trade war initiated by the Trump administration is the largest since the US imposed the Smoot-Hawley tariffs in the 1930s and was still raging when he left office. We analyze how the trade war impacted the 2020 US Presidential election. Our results highlight the political salience of the...

This paper investigates the distributional welfare effects of the recent trade war in the solar manufacturing sector resulting from the U.S. government-initiated trade tariffs against Chinese solar manufacturers. Our structural econometric model incorporates the vertical structure between...

We study global trade responses to the US-China trade war. We estimate the tariff impacts on product-level exports to the US, China, and rest of world. On average, countries decreased exports to China and increased exports to the US and rest of world. Most countries export products that...

We document the outbreak of a trade war after the U.S. adopted the Smoot-Hawley tariff in June 1930. U.S. trade partners initially protested the possible implementation of the sweeping tariff legislation, with many eventually choosing to retaliate by increasing their tariffs on imports from the...

Over the last three years, trade tensions between the United States (US) and China have transformed a fairly open bilateral trading environment into a rather protectionist one. The new administration of the United States has maintained most of the bilateral tariffs and non-tariff barriers put in...

We use detailed quarterly data on US energy exports to examine the impacts of the US-China trade dispute on US energy-related commodity exports. Largely due to the shale revolution, the energy-related US current account balance has been reduced to close to zero, down from accounting for about...

Under the influence of economic, technological and political factors, the oil market is prone to constant change, which requires analysis of its developmental trends. The purpose of this article is to do a comprehensive analysis of the impact of OPEC + countries on trade wars in the global oil...

During the 2018-2019 trade war, U.S. exports have been affected by foreign retaliatory tariffs, U.S. import tariffs that act through input-output linkages, and policy uncertainty. We establish, first, that the large negative impact of foreign tariffs on U.S. exports is highly heterogeneous...

How do countries settle disputes in the shadow of the law? Even in the presence of legalized dispute settlement, countries still rely on diplomatic channels to resolve conflicts. But it can be difficult to assess diplomacy's impact on dispute resolution, because those channels tend to be opaque....

Forced technology transfer has emerged from the US-China trade war as a new issue of systemic importance. The United States, the European Union and Japan have jointly condemned forced technology transfer as a practice undermining the proper function of international trade and called for new WTO...

Preventing trade wars is a key function of the WTO rule-based system. But as the United States and China waged the largest trade war in history, the WTO sat on the sidelines, unable to do anything to stop the fight. Why has the system failed so spectacularly? In a search for answers, this...

A ceasefire has been called in the trade war between the United States and China, but there is lingering uncertainty that will stifle aggregate spending until a "peace treaty" is signed. China is thus currently undertaking a precarious policy trifecta balancing act - trying to maintain steady...

We examine the impacts of the 2018-2019 U.S. import tariff increases on U.S. export growth through the lens of supply chain linkages. Using 2016 confidential firm-trade linked data, we document the implied incidence and scope of new import tariffs. Firms that eventually faced tariff increases on...

International investment agreements employ dispute settlement procedures that differ markedly from their counterparts in trade agreements along three key dimensions: standing (i.e., the right to file grievances), the nature of the remedy, and the remedial period. In the state-to-state dispute...

Since 2018, the U.S. and the EU have been erecting additional tariff barriers against each other. This study takes stock of existing transatlantic retaliatory tariffs and examines three different motives that explain how products are chosen to qualify for tariff retaliation. These channels are:...

In 2019 and the early months of 2020, global trade faced two major albeit very different shocks, namely the United States-China trade war and the cascading response of the countries around the world to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the former situation involved a pair of centrally-placed trading...

Rules-based trade is under attack and the WTO is at risk of marginalization. The COVID-19 pan-demic and its detrimental effects on public health, global supply- and value chains and industrial production, have brought back national export restrictions and stopped the free flow of goods and...

China's expansionary economic policy toward Western countries was not predicted only in Washington but also in the EU. As expected, the EU became aware of the fact that China is a tough competitor, redesigning not only the world economy but also challenging Europe under the 17+1 and the Belt and...

The authors analyze the economic consequences of the Economic and Trade Agreement (ETA) between China and the USA, also referred to as the Phase-I Deal, which was signed on January 15, 2020. It is a highly asymmetric treaty which commits China to open its markets and to purchase large quantities...

We find that Republican candidates lost support in the 2018 congressional election in counties more exposed to trade retaliation, but saw no commensurate electoral gains from US tariff protection. The electoral losses were driven by retaliatory tariffs on agricultural products, and were only...