The Impact Of Trade Policy Uncertainty On Chinese Enterprises’ Import

In recent years,the tide of anti-globalization is becoming increasingly fierce,and Trade Policy Uncertainty(TPU)continues to rise around the world.Since 2020,the COVID-19 has swept the world,making the international trade environment more volatile and uncertain.Against this backdrop,the reform process of the multilateral trading system represented by WTO has been hampered,and the multilateral trade liberalization negotiations have suffered setbacks repeatedly.It has not played an effective regulatory role in stabilizing the international trade environment.While Regional Trade Agreement(RTA),represented by Free Trade Area,plays an increasingly important role in promoting regional economic integration.In particular,the relentless ravages and spread of COVID-19 have dealt an unprecedented shock to international trade.China and ASEAN have worked together to fight the epidemic and minimize the damage to bilateral trade.In 2020,ASEAN became the largest trading partner of China,writing a new chapter of mutual assistance between ASEAN and China in the fight against the epidemic.Therefore,under the new situation that China is currently focusing on strategies such as "expanding domestic demand" and "actively expanding import",this paper chooses the representative China-ASEAN Free Trade Area(CAFTA)as the entry point to investigate the impact of TPU on Chinese enterprises’ import from the perspective of CAFTA.This paper takes the Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation between the People’s Republic of China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(hereinafter referred to as the Framework Agreement)which was formally implemented in July 2003 as a policy shock.Based on the micro-data at the enterprise level from 2001 to 2013,this paper adopts the Differences-in-Differences(DID)to construct a model for empirical test.The results show that the decline of TPU is conducive to the expansion of Chinese enterprises’ import scale,which can be transmitted through three channels:competition incentive effect,learning effect of export and alleviation of financing constraints.At the same time,there is heterogeneity in the impact of TPU on enterprises’import.From the perspective of ownership,the decline of TPU has the largest pulling effect on private enterprises,followed by foreign-capital enterprises,and the impact on state-owned enterprises is not significant.From the perspective of trade patterns,compared with general trade enterprises and mixed trade enterprises,the import of processing trade enterprises is more sensitive to the decline of TPU.From the perspective of industry factor intensity,the decline of TPU contributes most to the import growth of enterprises in capital-intensive industry,followed by technology-intensive industry,while resource-intensive industry and labor-intensive industry are not significantly affected by it.In terms of the region,the decline of TPU has a significant positive impact on the expansion of the import scale of enterprises in the eastern and central and western regions,and the impact on the enterprises in the central and western regions is more profound.After a series of validity and robustness tests,the results remain robust.In view of the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following policy suggestions from the level of enterprises and the government.Enterprises should accelerate the localization of imported products by high-level import strategy,strengthen innovation in technology,products and trade mode,alleviate financing constraints both at home and abroad,and improve risk supervision mechanism from various aspects.The government should actively promote the development of FT A,create a stable trade policy environment,provide targeted assistance and support to micro,small and medium-sized private enterprises,help processing trade break through the "difficulties",and pay more attention to the central and western regions and intervene appropriately.By examining the actual effect of the signing of the Framework Agreement,this paper helps clarify the general rules of TPU affecting Chinese enterprises’ import from the perspective of RTA,and provides a reference for enterprises and the government on how to deal with external TPU and avoid the risk of trade friction.It is of great significance to accelerate the optimization and upgrading of China’s industrial structure,comprehensively improve the level of opening to the outside world,realize high-quality economic development and promote regional economic cooperation.