Impact of Trade Frictions on Consumption: Mechanisms, Heterogeneity and Research Perspectives

This article takes the intensification of global trade frictions in recent years as its background, a systematic review of multiple core domestic and international literature on the relationship between trade frictions and residents' consumption from 2008 to 2025.This article, by constructing a four-dimensional analytical framework of "literature context - mechanism analysis-heterogeneous characteristics - research blind spots", discovers that first of all, trade frictions affect household consumption through three core channels: price transmission, income distribution and expectation adjustment. Among them, the multiplier effect generated by the transmission of the industrial chain is particularly significant. Secondly, the impact of consumption showed significant spatial gradient differences and group differentiation characteristics. Analysis based on provincial panel data in China shows that the consumption elasticity coefficient of the eastern coastal region (0.38) was 42% higher than that of the western region (0.27); cross-country comparative studies have found that the average decline in consumption of high-skilled workers was 5.2%,it is only 1/3 of the low-skilled group (15.7%).These research results not only enrich the theoretical system of international trade and consumer economy, but also enrich the theoretical system of international trade and consumer economy. It also provides an important reference for countries to formulate differentiated consumption stimulus policies in the context of anti-globalization. This paper suggests that future research should focus on constructing a full-chain analytical framework of "macro shock-meso-conduction-micro response". In particular, it is necessary to pay attention to the policy innovation of new buffer mechanisms.