America’s Automobile: Affection or Obsession, Myth or Reality?

Mythology plays an important part of the role of the American automobile, less so in terms of its primary function that is transportation, more so in terms of an ancillary purpose: its metaphorical significance to both owner or operator and the onlooking public. Across much of the 20th century and continuing now into the third decade of the 21st century, the American automobile has undergone many design changes that have buttressed its metaphorical significance: become streamlined, gained then lost then partially regained size together with a colorful exterior, and in the 21st century become focused on an array of interior gadgets, some cast into hibernation because of an electronic chip scarcity resulting from trade wars and the Covid-19 pandemic. Many Americans seem to have almost become besotted by automobiles, including their own and those driven by others, because in some respects the American automobile has come to define its driver. Automobiles in the United States that are visually appealing symbolize affluence, material success, preoccupation with speed, including the rapid pace of social change, as well as, at least arguably, a lesser regard for protecting the environment. On balance, in the mindset of many Americans, the automobile is larger than life, “a mode of signification, a form” in contrast to a mere machine. Change in automotive design has been heralded as the talisman of a new generation of drivers. However, what is cause and what is effect? American automobiles conflate myth and reality; that which is together with that which might be sometime temporal frustrations with the American Dream.

Comparative Analysis of Tariffs-Restricted Trade Wars between the United States and China Under the Recent Past Four Presidents: Did they Achieve Their Objectives?

This paper provides a comparative analysis of the tariffs-restricted trade wars between the United States and China under the recent past four presidents of the United States by using the difference-in-differences estimator framework. The overarching objective of three of the four presidential administrations that engaged in trade wars was to reduce the United States’ trade deficits with China. This raised some research questions. Did each administration achieve its objective of reducing the trade deficits with China? If so, which administration more effectively reduced the trade deficits in comparison to their immediate predecessor? What lessons can future administrations and governments around the world draw from the outcomes of the tariffs-restricted trade wars between the United States and China? To determine which president – Trump, Obama, and Bush – most effectively utilized import tariffs to reduce the trade deficits with China, we specified and tested three different sets of hypotheses. In sync with a controlled experiment, we tested another three sets of hypotheses in which we compared Presidents Trump, Obama, and Bush to President Clinton who did not impose tariffs on China. Based on our estimated results, we rejected all the null hypotheses in favor of the alternative hypotheses, which suggest that Presidents Trump, Obama, and Bush did not achieve any significant reduction in the United States’ trade deficits with China through the use of tariffs relative to President Clinton. The important lesson drawn from these findings is that tariffs are counterproductive and ineffective policy strategy.

Exchange Rate, Stock Price and Trade Volume in US-China Trade War during COVID-19: An Empirical Study

This article aims to examine the influence of international trade wars on the majority of stock market operations, both directly and indirectly affected. The impact of the trade war on the exchange rates of the participating countries was similarly negative. This article seeks to trace the conversion standards' footprints in the United States, China, and India using several indexes such as the Shanghai Composite Index, Dow Jones index, and Nifty 50. The cost of closing down various indices on a daily basis, as well as the conversion standard upsides of the participating currencies, are all examined in this study. Furthermore, utilizing the OLS and GARCH models, this work provides insights into measuring the uncertainties about the impact of exchanging scale on financial exchange. According to the findings of OLS, changes in the swapping scale have had a minor impact on the daily closing costs of stock records in the individual countries. The conversion standard, on the other hand, has a major impact on trade volumes in all three stock markets. When compared to the SSE and DJI equities, the GARCH model predicts that the contingent shift will be less shocking, resulting in a smaller impact on Nifty trade volume. To replicate the impact of trade wars during the Covid-19 crisis, the final results imply that data from domestic and international financial transactions must include securities market transactions.

The Relationship between Product Complexity and Exchange Rate Elasticities: Evidence from the People’s Republic of China’s Manufacturing Industries

More complex products are less substitutable in international trade and may therefore have lower price elasticities. We investigate this issue using 960 types of manufactured exports from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to 190 partner economies disaggregated at the Harmonized System 4-digit level. We measure complexity using Hidalgo and Hausmann’s (2009) product complexity index. We find that price elasticities are lower for more complex goods. These results imply that the PRC can reduce its exporters’ exposure to tariffs, trade wars, and exchange rate volatility by upgrading its export basket.