Has the US-China Trade War Caused Trade Decoupling?

Jeonghyun Kim (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, Sejong 30147, Korea)
Jinmyon Lee (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, Sejong 30147, Korea)
Bawoo Kim (Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, Sejong 30147, Korea) *

Journal of International Logistics and Trade

ISSN: 1738-2122

Article publication date: 31 December 2021

Issue publication date: 31 December 2021

412
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Abstract

Recently, decoupling between the US and China has emerged as an important issue in global economics. We propose an analytical framework for trade decoupling analysis, borrowing the idea from the production function in non-competitive input-output tables. Using that methodology, we analyze the mobile phone trade network subject to various measures imposed by the US. A scenario analysis is performed to compare the extent of decoupling after a trade war with worst-cases. In bilateral trade, China’s share of total US imports fell significantly in 2019 compared to 2017. However, China’s indirect exports to the US increased during the same period. A similar pattern is observed in the global trade network visualized via multidimensional scaling (MDS). China’s out-degree centrality decreased slightly, while Vietnam’s role expanded. Actual figures for 2019 show a decreased out-degree centrality for Chinese final good exports, but a much higher one in the scenarios. Also, China’s indirect exports to the US have increased. But China does not appear to play a key role in the network as assumed in the scenario. Throughout the study, intermediate goods were treated homogeneously, and further studies considering the heterogeneity of input-output linkages are needed.

Keywords

Citation

Kim, J., Lee, J. and Kim, B. (2021), "Has the US-China Trade War Caused Trade Decoupling?", Journal of International Logistics and Trade, Vol. 19 No. 4, pp. 211-222. https://doi.org/10.24006/jilt.2021.19.4.211

Publisher

:

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021 Jungseok Research Institute of International Logistics and Trade

License

This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited


Corresponding author

*Corresponding author: Bawoo Kim Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade, Sejong 30147, Korea Tel: +82-44-287-3921 E-mail:

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