Empirical Studies On The Impact Of Trade Facilitation On Export Competitiveness Of Mechanical And Electrical Products

In recent years,there have been signs that the growth rate of international trade is slowing down,trade protectionism and unilateralism are on the rise,and the multilateral trading system established by the WTO is suffering repeated setbacks.In the context of economic integration in the Asia-Pacific region,RCEP negotiations have become an opportunity for China to lead the Asia-Pacific free trade agreement.On the one hand,as the tariff reduction and non-tariff barriers decrease among countries,the influence of traditional trade barriers on import and export trade has been reduced,and the "trade non-efficiency" has attracted wide attention.Domestic and foreign scholars study found that the increase of trade facilitation can promote trade and increase social welfare.On the other hands,mechanical and electrical products,as one of the most competitive export products of China,account for the largest proportion of China’s exports products to RCEP member countries.However,the export competitiveness of China’s mechanical and electrical products and export trade scale.At the same time,the demand for mechanical and electrical products in the global market is declining,and the friction between countries in the import and export trade is intensifying,which has brought severe challenges to China’s export of mechanical and electrical products.The improvement of trade facilitation can greatly reduce the cost of international trade,and the improvement of trade facilitation may become one of the effective ways to enhance the export competitiveness of China’s mechanical and electrical products.This paper takes RCEP member countries as the research object,mainly studying the relationship between trade facilitation and export competitiveness of mechanical and electrical products.Firstly,the paper analyzes the theoretical basis and mechanism of trade facilitation affecting export competitiveness through literature review.Secondly,the development level of trade facilitation in RCEP member countries and the current situation of export competitiveness of mechanical and electrical products are analyzed by constructing a trade facilitation index system and measuring the four competitiveness indexes of MS,RSCA,CA and TC.Thirdly,the panel fixed effect model was used to regression the trade data of 13 major RCEP member countries from 2008 to 2017 to empirically test the impact of trade facilitation on product export competitiveness.The empirical analysis shows that under the control of other factors unchanged,the improvement of trade facilitation will promote the export competitiveness of mechanicaland electronic products to a greater extent.Labor cost,average tariff and real effective exchange rate all significantly promote the expansion of competitive advantage of export products,but the impact of gross domestic product,net inflow of foreign direct investment and labor productivity is not significant.In order to further test the robustness of the empirical results,this paper conducts an extended test from two aspects: first,through the decomposition of the trade facilitation indicators,the impact of the four first-level indicators of trade facilitation on the export competitiveness of products is investigated.The empirical results show that the port efficiency and e-commerce have the most significant impact;Second,due to the economic development level differences,RCEP members to visit trade facilitation effect of mechanical and electrical products export competitiveness state heterogeneity,the RCEP member states of the developed countries and developing countries grouped regression,according to the results to improve the level of trade facilitation to improve the export competitiveness of mechanical and electronic products of developing countries has significant positive effect,has the inhibiting effect for developed countries,including the port inhibition efficiency target contribution is bigger.Based on the above research results,this paper proposes three Suggestions for a country or an enterprise on how to improve the level of trade facilitation and export competitiveness of mechanical and electrical products.Second,innovation-driven,promoting the transformation and upgrading of the E-commerce industry;Third,we need to work for win-win cooperation and strengthen capacity building in trade facilitation among RCEP members.