Center for Agricultural Trade

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https://hdl.handle.net/10919/85060

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Browsing Center for Agricultural Trade by Author "Arita, Shawn"

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    Agricultural exports and retaliatory trade actions: An empirical assessment of the 2018/2019 trade conflict
    Grant, Jason H.; Arita, Shawn; Emlinger, Charlotte; Johansson, Robert C.; Xie, Chaoping (2021-01)
    We estimate the ex-post agricultural trade impacts of retaliatory measures imposed by foreign countries in response to United States' Section 232 and 301 tariffs using a theoretically consistent, monthly, product line gravity equation. Retaliation led to significant US agricultural export losses of $13.5 to $18.7 billion on an annualized basis. Considerable heterogeneity exists in the average treatment effect of retaliation. First, retaliatory trade actions presented a strong within-year seasonal impact. Nearly 70% of aggregate trade losses occurred during the US's peak export marketing season. Second, U.S. trade losses were particularly pronounced on homogeneous bulk commodities, whereas product differentiation dampened the impact of retaliation. Third, with few exceptions, the counterfactually estimated direct trade losses line up well with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) trade damage estimates for trade aid programs distributed to farmers impacted by the trade dispute. Finally, we find little evidence that U.S. exports were able to be reoriented to alternative, nonretaliating markets-an indication of high bilateral trade frictions and the destructive consequences of retaliatory trade actions.
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    Has Covid19 Caused a Great Trade Collapse? An Initial Ex Post Assessment
    Arita, Shawn; Grant, Jason H.; Sydow, Sharon (Virginia Tech. Center for Agricultural Trade, 2020-11)
    This paper conducts an early econometric examination of the impacts of COVID-19 on international trade. We find the pandemic reduced global agricultural trade by 4.2% in the 2nd and 3rd quarters of 2020. Agricultural trade was found to be significantly more stable than nonagricultural trade; however, the level of disruption varies substantially across commodities.
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    Has global agricultural trade been resilient under coronavirus (COVID-19)? Findings from an econometric assessment of 2020
    Arita, Shawn; Grant, Jason H.; Sydow, Sharon; Beckman, Jayson (Elsevier, 2022-02)
    Global agricultural trade, which increased at the end of 2020, has been described as "resilient" to the impacts of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic; however, the size and channels of its quantitative impacts are not clear. Using a reduced-form, gravity-based econometric model for monthly trade, we estimate the effects of COVID-19 incidence rates, policy restrictions imposed by governments to curb the outbreak, and the de facto reduction in human mobility/lockdown effect on global agricultural trade through the end of 2020. We find that while agricultural trade remained quite stable through the pandemic, the sector as a whole did not go unscathed. First, we estimate that COVID-19 reduced agricultural trade by the approximate range of 5 to 10 percent at the aggregate sector level; a quantified impact two to three times smaller in magnitude than our estimated impact on trade occurring in the non-agricultural sector. Second, we find sharp differences across individual commodities. In particular, we find that non-food items (hides and skins, ethanol, cotton, and other commodities), meat products including seafood, and higher value agri-food products were most severely impacted by the pandemic; however, the COVID-19 trade effect for the majority of food and bulk agricultural commodity sectors were found to be insignificant, or in a few cases, positive. Finally, we also examine the effects across low vs high income countries, the changing dynamics of the pandemic's effect on trade flows, and the effects along the extensive product margins of trade.