The Impact of U.S.-China Tensions on Borsa Istanbul Stock Market: Evidence from ARDL Approach

The aim of this study is to examine the impact of United States (U.S.)-China trade war tensions on the Borsa Istanbul (BIST) stock market. The study covers the period between January 2017 and February 2024. The reason for choosing this period is the escalation of U.S.-China trade tensions after Donald Trump took office as the 45th U.S. President in January 2017. In the research model, the BIST-100 Return Index is used as the dependent variable; the U.S.-China Tension Index developed by Roger et al. (2024) to represent the tensions arising from the U.S.-China trade war and the terms of trade, interest rate, inflation and exchange rate are considered as independent variables. The stationarity properties of the variables are analysed with Augmented Dickey and Fuller (ADF), Kwiatkowski et al. (KPSS, 1992), Christopoulos and León-Ledesma (2010) Fourier ADF and Becker et al. (2006) Fourier KPSS tests. Long and short-run relationships are analysed with the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bounds test approach. The results of the study show that increases in the U.S.-China Tension Index have a negative impact on the BIST-100 Return Index in both the long and short run. This finding reveals that Borsa Istanbul is sensitive to global geopolitical risks stemming from the U.S.-China trade war. The results point to the significant effects of global geopolitical risks on capital markets and emphasise that this is an important strategic factor that should be considered especially in terms of portfolio management and global risk management.