Empirical evidence on the impact of the "new round" of Sino-US trade frictions on China’s foreign trade industrial policy and high-quality development

The global attention on industrial policy’s effectiveness spans across various sectors, particularly in international trade where the focus is on enhancing the quality of foreign trade, which is crucial to understand how research hotspots and key issues can synergize. We consider the 2018 "new round" of Sino-US trade friction as an external event and analyze panel data from 2009 to 2022 comprising 1141 Chinese A-share listed enterprises. Our empirical research unequivocally demonstrates that industrial policy has significantly propelled China’s foreign trade towards high-quality development by 1.8240%. We conducted rigorous tests for robustness, heterogeneity, and endogeneity. Additionally, our results reveal that inhibitory influences arising from industrial policy on total assets or R&D investment attenuate this promotion effect; There exists a diminishing promotion effect between total assets and R&D investment. Our paper provides valuable insights into understanding their logical relationship while offering guidance for enterprises, markets, and governments in overcoming challenges collectively.