TPP And China’s Trade In Agricultural Products:Situation,Effects And Countermeasures

Since 21 stcentury, regional economic cooperation became the dominant mode of the world economy. Many regional economic integration organizations, multilateral and bilateral free trade agreements are coming forth, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement is the attentive focus among them. TPP Agreement requests the member states to open the domestic agricultural products market to promote the trade liberalization in agricultural products, which will bring a huge impact on the world agricultural trade pattern. China has a close trade relationship with most of TPP members, and it is of great practical significance to evaluate objectively the opportunities and challenges that TPP brings to the agricultural products trade of China, and take countermeasures to TPP Agreement scientifically and reasonably.Taking TPP agreement and China’s foreign trade of agricultural products as the research objects and combing theoretical method and empirical method, this paper studies the agricultural trade relationship between TPP countries and China, as well as the static effect and dynamic effect of TPP Agreement on trade flow of China’s agricultural products trade.This paper also makes analysis of influencing factors and prediction of trade flow between China and TPP countries through trade gravity model. Countermeasures are put forward in the end. The findings are as the following:In terms of agricultural products, TPP Agreement requires the member states to gradually eliminate tariffs on agricultural products trade with other members,and remove the export subsidies to certain agricultural products. TPP Agreement’s rule to fully open the agricultural products markets will greatly influence the trade patterns of the agricultural products all over the world, and make different impacts on the agricultural products trade of the members and non-members.China has a close relationship in agricultural products trade with many TPP counties, and the trade volume covers a large proportion of the total trade volume of China’s agricultural products. We have a trade deficit with most TPP members in agricultural products trade, with concentrated product structure. The trade in agricultural products between TPP countries has a strong substitution effect on China’s exports.The static effect of TPP shows that the net effect is negative for China if she does not join TPP, and the net effect may be positive or negative if she does. The dynamic effect indicates the positive effects of TPP on its members in terms of development of scale economy, promotion of competition and investment, which leads to fiercer competition for non-member countries and less conducive conditions for the development of agricultural products trade of the non-member countries. Therefore, it’s beneficial for China to join TPP.The trade gravity model shows that the scale of economy and population is the positive factor influencing agricultural products trade between China and TPP member states, and tariff rate,geographic distance and difference of income level are negative factors. Assuming China joins TPP and tariff on the bilateral agricultural products trade declines, the trade scale of agricultural products between China and the other 12 TPP members will further expand,which proves that it is beneficial for China’s foreign trade of agricultural products to join TPP.Based on the above conclusions, this paper puts forward some countermeasures,including adjusting the domestic agricultural production, developing the export potential,optimizing the structure of agricultural products trade and reducing the trade deficit scale,speeding up the implementation of FTA strategy, considering the effects of TPP rationally,and joining TPP actively at appropriate time.