IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/riibaf/v79y2025ics0275531925002843.html

Higher-order co-moment contagion during Trump’s second presidential term: A trade policy uncertainty perspective

Author

Listed:
  • Bouri, Elie
  • Jalkh, Naji
  • Demir, Ender

Abstract

Donald Trump's second presidential term continues to shape economic and trade policies as well as the dynamics of financial markets. In this paper, we examine whether U.S. trade policy uncertainty (TPU) under Trump’s second term triggers financial contagion with asset classes through higher-order moments of asset returns. Our analysis extends recent studies that consider abnormal returns and the dynamics of asset correlations around the tariffs announcements and contributes to the literature that links political transitions and trade policy uncertainty with financial markets beyond the first and second moments by considering higher-order comoment contagion. Using daily data on U.S. equities, U.S. treasury and corporate bonds, U.S. dollar index, gold, crude oil, and Bitcoin, we consider the 2024 U.S. presidential election, 2025 presidential inauguration, and liberation day. Overall, the results show evidence of contagion in co-volatility, co-skewness, and co-kurtosis between US trade policy uncertainty and each of the examined assets following the three events. This highlights the substantial exposure of these assets to Trump's proposed tariffs, which has important implications for the decision-making processes of various economic actors.

Suggested Citation

  • Bouri, Elie & Jalkh, Naji & Demir, Ender, 2025. "Higher-order co-moment contagion during Trump’s second presidential term: A trade policy uncertainty perspective," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:79:y:2025:i:c:s0275531925002843
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.103028
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0275531925002843
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ribaf.2025.103028?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Renée Fry-McKibbin & Cody Yu-Ling Hsiao, 2018. "Extremal dependence tests for contagion," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 626-649, July.
    2. Forbes, Kristin J. & Warnock, Francis E., 2012. "Capital flow waves: Surges, stops, flight, and retrenchment," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 235-251.
    3. Caldara, Dario & Iacoviello, Matteo & Molligo, Patrick & Prestipino, Andrea & Raffo, Andrea, 2020. "The economic effects of trade policy uncertainty," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 38-59.
    4. Geert Bekaert & Michael Ehrmann & Marcel Fratzscher & Arnaud Mehl, 2014. "The Global Crisis and Equity Market Contagion," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(6), pages 2597-2649, December.
    5. Bianconi, Marcelo & Esposito, Federico & Sammon, Marco, 2021. "Trade policy uncertainty and stock returns," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    6. Fry-McKibbin, Renée & Greenwood-Nimmo, Matthew & Hsiao, Cody Yu-Ling & Qi, Lin, 2022. "Higher-order comoment contagion among G20 equity markets during the COVID-19 pandemic," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 45(C).
    7. Adeel Riaz & Assad Ullah & Li Xingong, 2024. "Does trade policy uncertainty in China and USA matter for key financial markets?," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 1-30, April.
    8. Apergis, Nicholas & Christou, Christina & Kynigakis, Iason, 2019. "Contagion across US and European financial markets: Evidence from the CDS markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 1-12.
    9. Rao, Amar & Lucey, Brian & Kumar, Satish, 2025. "Financial market reactions to U.S. tariff announcements: Evidence from trade-surplus and trade-deficit countries," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Alan J. Auerbach & Yuriy Gorodnichenko, 2013. "Corrigendum: Measuring the Output Responses to Fiscal Policy," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 320-322, August.
    11. Scott R. Baker & Nicholas Bloom & Steven J. Davis, 2016. "Measuring Economic Policy Uncertainty," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1593-1636.
    12. Rüdiger Fahlenbrach & Kevin Rageth & René M Stulz, 2021. "How Valuable Is Financial Flexibility when Revenue Stops? Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis [The risk of being a fallen angel and the corporate dash for cash in the midst of COVID]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5474-5521.
    13. Hui, Eddie Chi-man & Chan, Ka Kwan Kevin, 2014. "The global financial crisis: Is there any contagion between real estate and equity markets?," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 405(C), pages 216-225.
    14. Simon Gilchrist & Egon Zakrajsek, 2012. "Credit Spreads and Business Cycle Fluctuations," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(4), pages 1692-1720, June.
    15. Kaczmarek, Tomasz & Demir, Ender & Rouatbi, Wael & Zaremba, Adam, 2025. "Tariffs announcement as a global stress test: Early stock market reactions to U.S. protectionism," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 85(PD).
    16. Pástor, Ľuboš & Veronesi, Pietro, 2013. "Political uncertainty and risk premia," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(3), pages 520-545.
    17. Baur, Dirk G. & Hong, KiHoon & Lee, Adrian D., 2018. "Bitcoin: Medium of exchange or speculative assets?," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 177-189.
    18. Yang, Cai & Zhang, Hongwei & Qin, Yun & Niu, Zibo, 2024. "Partisan conflict, trade policy uncertainty, and the energy market," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    19. Cheng, Natalie Fang Ling & Hasanov, Akram Shavkatovich & Poon, Wai Ching & Bouri, Elie, 2023. "The US-China trade war and the volatility linkages between energy and agricultural commodities," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    20. Mardi Dungey & Renee Fry & Brenda Gonzalez-Hermosillo & Vance Martin, 2005. "Empirical modelling of contagion: a review of methodologies," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(1), pages 9-24.
    21. Travis Cable & Amir Mani & Wei Qi & Georgios Sotiropoulos & Yiyuan Xiong, 2025. "On the Efficacy of Shorting Corporate Bonds as a Tail Risk Hedging Solution," Papers 2504.06289, arXiv.org.
    22. Chih-Chiang Wu & Wei-Peng Chen & Nattawadee Korsakul, 2025. "Extreme risk spillover in the equity markets: Evidence from the U.S.–China trade war," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 65(3), pages 1203-1228, October.
    23. Nicholas Bloom, 2009. "The Impact of Uncertainty Shocks," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(3), pages 623-685, May.
    24. Kaczmarek, Tomasz & Demir, Ender & Rouatbi, Wael & Zaremba, Adam, 2025. "Tariff exposure and sectoral vulnerability: Evidence from equity market responses to the 2025 U.S. trade shock," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(PB).
    25. Huseyin Gulen & Mihai Ion, 2016. "Editor's Choice Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Investment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(3), pages 523-564.
    26. Minseog Oh & Donggyu Kim, 2024. "Effect of the U.S.–China Trade War on Stock Markets: A Financial Contagion Perspective," Journal of Financial Econometrics, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(4), pages 954-1005.
    27. Fry, Renée & Martin, Vance L. & Tang, Chrismin, 2010. "A New Class of Tests of Contagion With Applications," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 28(3), pages 423-437.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Chun Lu & James Routledge & Kam C. Chan & Tongxia Li, 2023. "Policy uncertainty and inventory behavior: Evidence from the US manufacturing sector," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(3), pages 919-948, November.
    2. Danilo Cascaldi-Garcia & Cisil Sarisoy & Juan M. Londono & Bo Sun & Deepa D. Datta & Thiago Ferreira & Olesya Grishchenko & Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar & Francesca Loria & Sai Ma & Marius Rodriguez & Ilk, 2023. "What Is Certain about Uncertainty?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 624-654, June.
    3. Arbatli Saxegaard, Elif C. & Davis, Steven J. & Ito, Arata & Miake, Naoko, 2022. "Policy uncertainty in Japan," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    4. Gao, Huasheng & Wang, Yuxi, 2025. "Tariff uncertainty and the cost of debt: Evidence from United States–China permanent normal trade relations," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    5. Shafiullah, Muhammad & Senthilkumar, Arunachalam & Lucey, Brian M. & Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr, 2024. "Deciphering asymmetric spillovers in US industries: Insights from higher-order moments," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(PA).
    6. Yfanti, Stavroula & Karanasos, Menelaos & Zopounidis, Constantin & Christopoulos, Apostolos, 2023. "Corporate credit risk counter-cyclical interdependence: A systematic analysis of cross-border and cross-sector correlation dynamics," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(2), pages 813-831.
    7. Yuan, Di & Li, Sufang & Li, Rong & Zhang, Feipeng, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty, oil and stock markets in BRIC: Evidence from quantiles analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    8. Raza, Syed Ali & Masood, Amna & Benkraiem, Ramzi & Urom, Christian, 2023. "Forecasting the volatility of precious metals prices with global economic policy uncertainty in pre and during the COVID-19 period: Novel evidence from the GARCH-MIDAS approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    9. Ashton De Silva & Huu Nhan Duong & My Nguyen & Yen Ngoc Nguyen, 2023. "Bank risk in uncertain times: Do credit rationing and revenue diversification matter?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(7-8), pages 1240-1273, July.
    10. Huang, Guan-Ying & Shen, Carl Hsin-han & Wu, Zhen-Xing, 2023. "Firm-level political risk and debt choice," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    11. Liu, Zhenhua & Zhang, Huiying & Ding, Zhihua & Lv, Tao & Wang, Xu & Wang, Deqing, 2022. "When are the effects of economic policy uncertainty on oil–stock correlations larger? Evidence from a regime-switching analysis," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    12. Suh, Hyunduk & Yang, Jin Young, 2021. "Global uncertainty and Global Economic Policy Uncertainty: Different implications for firm investment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    13. Szczygielski, Jan Jakub & Charteris, Ailie & Obojska, Lidia & Brzeszczyński, Janusz, 2025. "Energy in turmoil: Industry resilience to uncertainty during the global energy crisis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 389(C).
    14. Gilles Dufrénot & William Ginn & Marc Pourroy, 2023. "ENSO Climate Patterns on Global Economic Conditions," AMSE Working Papers 2308, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    15. D'Mello, Ranjan & Toscano, Francesca, 2020. "Economic policy uncertainty and short-term financing: The case of trade credit," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    16. Huang, Jin & Jin, Yong & Duan, Yang & She, Yanling, 2023. "Do Chinese firms speculate during high economic policy uncertainty? Evidence from wealth management products," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    17. Mohammad Al-Shboul & Aktham Maghyereh, 2023. "Did real economic uncertainty drive risk connectedness in the oil–stock nexus during the COVID-19 outbreak? A partial wavelet coherence analysis," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 12(1), pages 1-23, December.
    18. Chowdhury, Md Shahedur R. & Aram, Mohsen & Javadi, Siamak & Nejadmalayeri, Ali, 2025. "Geopolitical risk and corporate capital structure," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    19. Aboagye, Ernest & Ko, Stanley Iat-Meng & Lo, Chia Chun & Hsiao, Cody Yu-Ling & Peng, Liang, 2024. "A contagion test with unspecified heteroscedastic errors," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    20. Lee, Chi-Chuan & Lee, Chien-Chiang & Xiao, Shunyi, 2021. "Policy-related risk and corporate financing behavior: Evidence from China’s listed companies," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 539-547.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:79:y:2025:i:c:s0275531925002843. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ribaf .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.