Why will Trump lose the trade war?

ABSTRACT

The escalating U.S.–China trade conflicts have increasingly shadowed the outlook of the world economy. The Trump administration aims to achieve its strategic goals including reducing current account deficits, promoting the U.S. manufacturing sector, and curbing Chinese high-tech industries by waging the trade war against China. This paper argues that the current account deficits and the declining manufacturing sector in the U.S. are mainly driven by its internal structural factors, such as low saving rates, high labor costs, and rising service sector, rather than by the import competition from China. Moreover, the trade war further deteriorates the U.S. current account deficits and erode its comparative advantage, and it forces China to invest more in technological innovation and human capital, and thus promote its progress in high-tech industries. Thus, the U.S. will not be able to achieve its strategical goals and eventually lose the trade war.     

Environmental standards as barriers to trade

This paper examines the case of a good, polluting in consumption, whose pollutive content is restricted by a government with strong environmental policies. When foreign producers are unable to comply with the restrictive environmental standard of such a country, to which they wish to export, they often allege that those standards constitute illegal barriers to free trade. An example of such a good is gasoline, excessively pollutive formulations of which are prohibited from importation into the United States by the 1970 Clean Air Act. Rather than banning them, such imports should be taxed, along with the domestically produced substitute good, according to their respective pollutant contents. This would foster economic efficiency and should be more acceptable to foreign producers than the outright prohibition mandated by the Clean Air Act. The results of this paper reaffirm the argument in a previous article in this journal (Socio-Economic Planning Sciences 29 (1995) 187), though the countries’ roles in the two papers are reversed, that free trade and Pigouvian environmental policies increase international welfare.     

关税升级与中国汽车产业发展——基于空间经济学的经验研究

本文利用中国与主要汽车生产国的汽车产业有关数据，在一个关税升级体系下垄断竞争产业发展模型的基础上，运用校准法进行了初步的经验研究。与以往汽车产业贸易政策基于寡占市场结构的经验研究不同，本文试图在垄断竞争市场结构下考察关税升级对中国汽车产业发展趋势的影响。研究表明，集合主要汽车生产国的数据后，汽车产业具有集聚发展的倾向，而我国目前较高程度的关税升级体系在其他条件不变的情况下，能够降低汽车产业实现大发展的临界条件。     

入世后中国汽车工业安全度的DEA模型估算

汽车工业长期以来是我国重点实行保护政策的产业,因而也是入世后受冲击最大的产业之一。但是这种冲击到底有多大,以及在入世后的各个年份中,这种冲击又是如何分布的?尽管有不少学者已做了一些定性分析,但是定量估算的研究则少之又少。本文首先对入世后的汽车工业发展环境进行了分析,然后对入世后汽车工业发展的关键指标数据进行了预测,最后应用DEA模型对入世后汽车工业安全度进行了估算,得出了有说服力的估算结果。     

Economic liberalization and welfare in a model with an informal sector

The paper reexamines the conventional results relating to inflow of foreign capital, removal of protectionism and structural reform programmes, in a small open economy in terms of a two-sector general equilibrium model with an informal sector. The paper shows that in the presence of labour market distortion and a protectionist policy, inflow of foreign capital may be desirable irrespective of the pattern of trade of the economy due to its favourable impact on welfare. But the welfare implications of tariff reductions and/or structural adjustment programmes, such as deregulating the formal sector labour market, depend crucially on the economy's trade pattern. The paper provides an answer to the question as to whether in a developing economy labour market reform and tariff reform should go hand-in-hand or whether one should precede the other for welfare improvement.
JEL classification: F10, F13, F21, O17.     

Welfare reducing licensing

In this paper, we characterize situations where licensing a cost reducing innovation to a rival firm using two-part tariff contracts (a fixed fee plus a linear per unit of output royalty) reduces social welfare. We show that it occurs if (i) the firms compete in prices, (ii) the innovation is large enough but not drastic, and (iii) the goods are close enough substitutes. Moreover, we show that, regardless of the type of competition, first, the optimal contract always includes a positive royalty and, second, even drastic innovations are licensed whenever the goods are not homogeneous.     

关税减让政策对我国进口的影响

中国加入WTO后,关税减让协议的逐步实行对我国进口贸易产生了极大影响.研究结果表明,关税与我国进口贸易额之间存在着高度的负相关关系,在影响我国进口效应的诸多因素中.关税起到了主要作用,但并非唯一因素.而关税减让在影响我国进口商品结构方面的作用不大.可见,在优化我国进口商品结构方面还需要其他政策措施的辅助与调整.     

峰谷分时电价的现状分析与发展趋势探讨

分时电价以经济学均衡价格为理论依据。它在引导客户合理用电、削峰填谷、优化电力资源配置等方面起了积极的作用。但它也存在分时价差幅度小、时段划分长、缺乏灵活性及实施范围窄等问题。完善分时电价运行机制,由分时电价向实时电价转变。     

运用经济杠杆促进错峰调荷——安徽省峰谷电价分析

阐述了安徽省峰谷电价的实施背景、方案的主要内容和创新特点,2004年上半年的实际执行情况及取得的效果。结合安徽省实际情况,对下一阶段如何优化峰谷电价方案、进一步发挥价格杠杆作用提出了建议。     

Tariffs and formation of free trade agreements networks

This paper examines the formation of bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) on the basis of country heterogeneity in the tariff level. We demonstrate that a country's unilateral incentive to form an FTA depends on the relative magnitudes of the (negative) market concession effect and the (positive) market expansion effect, both of which are determined by the tariff levels of the two FTA partner countries. Global welfare is maximised when all country pairs form FTAs. Two countries in equilibrium are more likely to form an FTA when their tariff gap is smaller or when their tariff levels are neither very high nor very low. This finding is robust to several extensions of the model. Our preliminary empirical analysis provides some evidence for the finding.