Research

Tariffs as Bargaining Chips: A Quantitative Analysis of US-China Trade War
(with Naiyuan Hu and Yuan Mei)

Abstract
Non-cooperative tariffs change outside options and thus affect welfare outcomes in poten- tial tariff negotiations. We focus on the U.S.–China trade war from 2018 through 2019 and examine whether such tariffs can serve as leverage to improve U.S. post-negotiation welfare. With a multi-country, multi-sector quantitative trade model, we simulate negotiations from two starting points: the 2017 baseline and the 2019 trade-war equilibrium. Our results show that, across reasonable estimates of U.S. bargaining power, imposing trade-war tariffs before the negotiations consistently enhances U.S. post-negotiation welfare.

Research Assistant to Prof. Lin Ma, Singapore Management University, 2024
Research Assistant to Prof. Christine Ho, Singapore Management University, 2023
Research Assistant to Prof. Pao-Li Chang, Singapore Management University, 2023
Research Assistant to Prof. Yuan Mei, Singapore Management University, 2022-2024