The Political Cycle Of Anti-dumping

International economic openness and cooperation remains an unstoppable trend,although economic globalization has faced counter-current shocks in recent years.Under the open world economy,trade protectionism is emerging,which seriously hinders the development of globalization.Anti-dumping is the most frequently operated and widely covered trade protection instrument today,which brings more uncertainty and instability to economic globalization while effectively sheltering the development of enterprises in the initiating countries.Therefore,a careful analysis of the purpose and reasons for initiating anti-dumping can help prevent trade risks and better participate in the globalized economy.As one of the countries initiating the most anti-dumping,the U.S.anti-dumping decisions are not only influenced by domestic and foreign economic factors,but may also be influenced by political factors.One of the political factors is the U.S.presidential election,which has a clear political cycle,and the president may draw on national trade policies to promote the success of their campaigns with obviously political intentions.This paper uses the data of U.S.foreign initiation of anti-dumping from1991-2019,combines employment data and the importance of swing states in the political cycle,generates “swing industry” indicators as a measure of the political importance of each industry to swing states,analyzes the correlation between U.S.presidential election and initiation of anti-dumping behavior,and focuses on examining the influence of political factors on anti-dumping behavior,so as to reveal the political cycle characteristics.Since there is a possible reverse causality between swing industry and anti-dumping behavior,to deal with the endogeneity issue,we construct effective instrumental variables and verify the robustness of the results using the least squares method.The study shows that swing industry significantly influences the behavior of the U.S.in initiating antidumping.Based on electoral motives,the U.S.is more likely to initiate anti-dumping against important industries in swing states and may initiate more often,but does not necessarily end up with higher anti-dumping duty rates.We argue that the U.S.initiation of anti-dumping has a clear political intent,specifically,the U.S.president,based on electoral motives,will use his authority to initiate anti-dumping frequently to show goodwill to swing state voters,emphasize political positions that are consistent with the interests of swing state voters,and gain the favor of swing state voters in order to win key votes from key groups in swing states and increase the likelihood of successful election.The initiating act of anti-dumping is sufficient to achieve the president’s political motivation,and it is easy to operate and suitable for frequent use,while the taxing act has legal effects and may be subject to foreign complaints or punitive tariffs,leading to more severe economic losses,and thus is not actually taxed due to the trade-off of interests.Unlike the previous literature,which mainly focuses on the correction about time,this paper innovates the perspective of industry-level analysis and focuses on the selection bias of the U.S.import anti-dumping initiation in the industry under the influence of the political cycle,thus expanding the research perspective and increasing the meso-level empirical analysis.In addition,this paper starts from the process of initiating anti-dumping and measures the final outcome of anti-dumping cases with anti-dumping duty rates to compare and argue the strong political motivation for the U.S.to initiate anti-dumping actions.So this paper helps to deepen the understanding of political factors affecting anti-dumping and enrich the research results of the interdisciplinary study of economics and political science.To a certain extent,it can improve the attention and importance of the relevant departments to political factors,which may help the relevant trade departments and export enterprises in China to grasp the changes in the international trade environment in a timely manner,improve the accuracy of predicting the U.S.trade policy,reduce trade risks,and may provide new directions to strengthen international political exchanges so as to improve the external environment of export trade.