The US-China trade war with increasing trade policy uncertainty

Purpose This study aims to examine the impacts of changing US trade policy uncertainty (henceforth, TPU Index) on US bilateral trade balance with China from a nonlinear methodology perspective. Design/methodology/approach The nonlinear auto regressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, recently developed by Shin et al. (2014), is applied. This model decomposes the TPU Index series into its increases (TPU+) and decreases (TPU−) and creates two new TPU Index series. Findings Empirical findings indicate that increases in the TPU Index improve the US bilateral trade balance only in the short-run (no long-run impact). However, decreases in the TPU Index worsen the US trade balance in the short run but improve it in the long run. Apart from these effects detected on US–China bilateral trade balances, this empirical study draws the conclusion that changing trade policy uncertainty plays a significant determining role for bilateral trade volumes. Originality/value Decomposed TPU index with the nonlinear ARDL model enables us to examine the separate impacts of the changes in TPU+ and TPU− indexes on US bilateral trade balance with China. Therefore, this model may discover potentially concealed-hidden true impacts of TPU index on US bilateral trade balance with this country.

US investment rules will tighten for some countries

Significance US-China trade frictions, centring chiefly on disagreements over technology, intellectual property and the bilateral trade balance, are causing international market uncertainty. One US response to concerns about trading with China has been to expand the remit of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which evaluates investments into the United States from abroad. Impacts CFIUS expansion has bipartisan support and will continue regardless of the winner of the 2020 presidential election. The CFIUS intervened when a Chinese firm bought a US dating app, perhaps a precedent for seemingly non-security related investments. The CFIUS does not cover non-acquiring business partnerships or joint ventures, but general political pressure could curtail these.

FENOMENA KURVA J PADA NERACA PERDAGANGAN INDONESIA DENGAN ENAM NEGARA MITRA DAGANG UTAMA

Whether a J curve phenomenon exists or not on the balance of trade has been an interest for empirical investigation in international economics. The phenomenon is typically associated with the response of the balance of trade to the exchange rate dynamics. Since a country has different trade features with different trading partners, the trade balances adjustment to the exchange rate dynamics should be seen as a head to head phenomenon. This paper investigates the effect of real effective exchange rate (REER) on the bilateral trade balance between Indonesia and its six major trading partners, namely Japan, China, Singapore, United States, South Korea and India on a quarterly basis over the period 1995.1 to 2013.4. The short run and the long run effect of the REER on the balance of trade is expected to be captured using error correction model (ECM) and vector error correction model (VECM). Subsequently, impulse response function is used to trace out the behavior of the bilateral trade balance in response to the REER shock whereas forecast error variance decomposition (FEVD) is used to decay the effect of innovation variables in the system. The result indicates that in the long run a J curve phenomenon appears on the bilateral trade balance between Indonesia and Japan, China, Singapore as well as South Korea. In the short run, a J curve phenomenon is seen on the bilateral trade balance between Indonesia and China as well as Singapore. This confirms that a J curve is a head to head phenomenon that has correlation with the trade features. Thus, the correction mechanism to the trade balance in response to the exchange rate shock (i.e. exchange rate market intervention) should count trade features as a consideration