Analysis On The Causes And Economic Effects Of Sino-US Steel Trade Frictions

With the enlarging steel trade imbalances between China and US, China's steel products become one of the traded products that meet the most intensive trade protectionism from US only after textiles. The trade protection measures against the steel products made in China has developed from initial simple anti-dumping duties to recent anti-dumping and countervailing duties. The range of product and the total amount that are sued are increasing very fast. The anti-dumping and countervailing duties are also growing very fast, with severe adverse effects on the competitiveness of China's steel products in US market, a bandwagon effect has been also invoked as other importing countries follow suit, which further threatens the position of China's steel products in the international market, damaging the overall development of China's economy. Under these situations, this paper firstly analyzes the causes of trade frictions within economic and legal theoretical hand; Secondly, the paper explores the causes of Sino-US frequent steel trade frictions hypothetically and empirically; Then, the paper estimates the directions and magnitudes of impacts of steel anti-dumping against China using the SVAR method. The empirical results show that the intensive Sino-US steel products trade frictions have significant negative impacts on china's employment, export competitiveness and export market concentration, etc. Finally, based on the theoretical and empirical analyses, the article puts forward some suggestions on how China should take measures to alleviate the damages caused by trade protectionism.