The US-China Trade Dispute: A Macroperspective

Abstract

Declining global multilateralism has brought numerous trade disputes, most notably between the US and China. Here, a new global model featuring monetary policy and revenue reassignment are used to examine the effects of this conflict and this macroeconomic perspective proves to be important. The emergent results provide additional insight and complement other "trade-focused" general equilibrium studies. We find that, with capacity adjustment, US unilateral protection emerges as "beggar thy neighbor" policy. China’s proportional losses are large, little mitigated by its retaliation, which nonetheless constrains US net gains. Third regions trading with China and the US suffer losses only partly offset by trade diversion and greatly enhanced if, to avoid leakage, protection is extended to all sources.