Title: How the steel industry has been affected by the trade war between the USA and China

Authors: Fakhrul Hasan; Md Rahat Hossen; Ahmed Ashfaque Shahbaz

Addresses: Department of Accounting and Finance, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK ' Department of Economics, University of Idaho, Idaho, USA ' College of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

Abstract: This research paper mainly focuses on how the US and Chinese steel industry has been affected by the trade war between the USA and China. One of the main election manifestos of Donald Trump was to reduce and eventually stop the steel import from China - the argument behind the manifesto was that "China dumps their cheap steel in the USA, resulting in the US steel industry to suffer." The implementation of the manifesto caused a significant number of relevant business organisations to shut down along with a significant number of US labourers to lose their jobs. As we use data from 2013 to 2019, we find that the US steel imports from China started to decline when Trump took the helm. The import decline continued until the end of 2019. As a result of the import decline, China also reacted strongly and reduced steel imports from the USA. Therefore, this trade war has had a direct impact on US steel exports, and the country has lost a substantial amount of their export revenue.

Keywords: the USA; China; steel; export; import.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCA.2021.118328

International Journal of Critical Accounting, 2021 Vol.12 No.4, pp.348 - 368

Received: 13 May 2021
Accepted: 06 Jul 2021
Published online: 20 Oct 2021 *

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