IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/ecpoli/v35y2020i103p519-559..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The US–Chinese trade war: an event study of stock-market responses

Author

Listed:
  • Peter H Egger
  • Jiaqing Zhu

Abstract

SUMMARYAt the beginning of 2018, President Trump started taking protective tariff measures against products from China in a sequence of events which started a ‘trade war’ between the United States and China. As the value of trade flows affected on both sides rose to a significant amount, this episode will become an interesting research object in the future. A thorough analysis of many outcomes of interest is at this point in time – and even will be in the next few years – impossible due to a lack of data which will only become available at a later point. However, as is customary with historical preferential liberalizations in trade agreements and potentially the opposite of it through Brexit, it is possible to gauge consequences of this ‘trade war’ or ‘trade dispute’ when focusing on the stocks of listed companies around related tariff-change announcements or implementations by the United States and China in the relevant time span. This paper proposes such an analysis and finds, very much consistent with the rumours from business, that the associated protectionist tariffs appear to have done to a large extent the opposite of what was intended: they hurt domestic firms in targeted and also other, untargeted sectors of an acting country, and they affect third countries and territories which are not even party to the ‘trade war’ or ‘dispute’.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter H Egger & Jiaqing Zhu, 2020. "The US–Chinese trade war: an event study of stock-market responses," Economic Policy, CEPR, CESifo, Sciences Po;CES;MSH, vol. 35(103), pages 519-559.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:ecpoli:v:35:y:2020:i:103:p:519-559.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/epolic/eiaa016
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aileen J. Thompson, 1993. "The Anticipated Sectoral Adjustment to the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement: An Event Study Analysis," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 26(2), pages 253-271, May.
    2. Holger Breinlich & Elsa Leromain & Dennis Novy & Thomas Sampson & Ahmed Usman, 2018. "The Economic Effects of Brexit: Evidence from the Stock Market," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(4), pages 581-623, December.
    3. Moser, Christoph & Rose, Andrew K., 2014. "Who benefits from regional trade agreements? The view from the stock market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 31-47.
    4. White, Halbert, 1980. "A Heteroskedasticity-Consistent Covariance Matrix Estimator and a Direct Test for Heteroskedasticity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(4), pages 817-838, May.
    5. Davies, Ronald B. & Studnicka, Zuzanna, 2018. "The heterogeneous impact of Brexit: Early indications from the FTSE," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-17.
    6. Mary Amiti & Stephen J. Redding & David E. Weinstein, 2019. "The impact of the 2018 trade war on US prices and welfare," CentrePiece - The magazine for economic performance 553, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. Pablo D Fajgelbaum & Pinelopi K Goldberg & Patrick J Kennedy & Amit K Khandelwal, 2020. "The Return to Protectionism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(1), pages 1-55.
    8. Jonathan Eaton & Samuel Kortum, 2002. "Technology, Geography, and Trade," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(5), pages 1741-1779, September.
    9. Breinlich, Holger, 2014. "Heterogeneous firm-level responses to trade liberalization: A test using stock price reactions," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 270-285.
    10. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    11. Peter Rodriguez, 2003. "Investor Expectations and the North American Free Trade Agreement," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(1), pages 206-218, February.
    12. Thompson, Aileen J., 1994. "Trade liberalization, comparative advantage, and scale economies stock market evidence from Canada," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1-2), pages 1-27, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. HAYAKAWA, Kazunobu & SUDSAWASD, Sasatra, 2024. "Trade Effects of the US–China Trade War on a Third Country: Preventing Trade Rerouting from China," IDE Discussion Papers 916, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    2. Metiu, Norbert, 2021. "Anticipation effects of protectionist U.S. trade policies," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    3. Chih‐Hai Yang & Kazunobu Hayakawa, 2023. "The Substitution Effect of US‐China Trade War on Taiwanese Trade," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 61(4), pages 324-341, December.
    4. Xu, Jin & Huang, Shoujun & Shi, Lu & Sharma, Susan Sunila, 2021. "Trade conflicts and energy firms' market values: Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    5. He, Chuan & Mau, Karsten & Xu, Mingzhi, 2021. "Trade Shocks and Firms Hiring Decisions: Evidence from Vacancy Postings of Chinese Firms in the Trade War," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    6. Sascha Tobias Wengerek, 2020. "Share price reactions to tariff imposition announcements in the Trump era - An event study of the trade conflict," Working Papers Dissertations 59, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    7. Chen, Yong & Fang, Jing & Liu, Dingming, 2023. "The effects of Trump’s trade war on U.S. financial markets," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    8. Gu, Xin & Zhang, Weiqiang & Cheng, Sang, 2021. "How do investors in Chinese stock market react to external uncertainty? An event study to the Sino-US disputes," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).

    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. Gu, Xin & Zhang, Weiqiang & Cheng, Sang, 2021. "How do investors in Chinese stock market react to external uncertainty? An event study to the Sino-US disputes," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    2. Breinlich, Holger, 2015. "The Effect of Trade Liberalization on Firm-Level Profits: An Event-Study Approach," CEPR Discussion Papers 11011, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Andreas Dür & Lisa Lechner, 2023. "Winners and Losers From Trade Agreements: Stock Market Reactions to TPP and TTIP," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 11(4), pages 200-211.
    4. Dieter Smeets & Marco Zimmermann, 2013. "Did the EU Summits Succeed in Convincing the Markets during the Recent Crisis?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(6), pages 1158-1177, November.
    5. Holger Breinlich & Elsa Leromain & Dennis Novy & Thomas Sampson & Ahmed Usman, 2018. "The Economic Effects of Brexit: Evidence from the Stock Market," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(4), pages 581-623, December.
    6. Holger Breinlich & Elsa Leromain & Dennis Novy & Thomas Sampson, 2019. "Exchange rates and consumer prices: evidence from Brexit," CEP Discussion Papers dp1667, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    7. Andrew N. Greenland & Mihai Ion & John W. Lopresti & Peter K. Schott, 2020. "Using Equity Market Reactions to Infer Exposure to Trade Liberalization," NBER Working Papers 27510, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Sanyal, Anirban, 2023. "Caught in the Crossfire: How Trade Policy Uncertainty Impacts Global Trade," EconStor Preprints 272825, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Moser, Christoph & Rose, Andrew K., 2014. "Who benefits from regional trade agreements? The view from the stock market," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 31-47.
    10. Rasyad A. Parinduri & Shandre M. Thangavelu, 2013. "Trade liberalization, free trade agreements, and the value of firms: Stock market evidence from Singapore," The Journal of International Trade & Economic Development, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(6), pages 924-941, September.
    11. Miaojie Yu, 2020. "China-US Trade War and Trade Talk," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-981-15-3785-1, September.
    12. Peter H. Egger & Jiaqing Zhu, 2021. "Dynamic network and own effects on abnormal returns: evidence from China’s stock market," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 487-512, January.
    13. Bolatto, Stefano & Moramarco, Graziano, 2023. "Gains from trade and their quantification: Does sectoral disaggregation matter?," International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 44-68.
    14. Holger Breinlich & Elsa Leromain & Dennis Novy & Thomas Sampson, 2021. "Import liberalization as export destruction? Evidence from the United States," CEP Discussion Papers dp1779, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Lukas Boer & Lukas Menkhoff & Malte Rieth, 2023. "The multifaceted impact of US trade policy on financial markets," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 38(3), pages 388-406, April.
    16. Swati Dhingra & Thomas Sampson, 2022. "Expecting Brexit," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 14(1), pages 495-519, August.
    17. Ariel Weinberger & Qian Xuefeng & Mahmut Yaşar, 2021. "Export tax rebates and resource misallocation: Evidence from a large developing country," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(4), pages 1562-1608, November.
    18. Hoste, J. & Verboven, F., 2024. "Uncovering the Sources of Cross-border Market Segmentation: Evidence from the EU and the US," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2402, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    19. Baier, Scott L. & Yotov, Yoto V. & Zylkin, Thomas, 2019. "On the widely differing effects of free trade agreements: Lessons from twenty years of trade integration," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 206-226.
    20. Davies, Ronald B. & Studnicka, Zuzanna, 2018. "The heterogeneous impact of Brexit: Early indications from the FTSE," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-17.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    F15; F23; G14; —Peter H. Egger and Jiaqing Zhu;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    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:oup:ecpoli:v:35:y:2020:i:103:p:519-559.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cebruuk.html .

    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.