The impact of the Sino–US trade war on Chinese economy: from the perspective of trade policy uncertainty

During Trump’s administration, the uncertainty of China–US trade policies soared sharply. This study, based on the USITC’s 2018 list of tariffs imposed on China, combined with city statistical yearbooks and customs data, calculated the changes in trade policy uncertainty in various prefecture-level cities of China across different industries. Using DID model with a continuous dependent variable for empirical analysis, it was found that the Sino–US trade war caused China’s economic growth rate to decline by approximately 0.292% points, with an annual economic loss of over 200 billion yuan. Moreover, this impact shows significant differences in various regions, which depends on numerous factors such as export intensity, TPU exposure level, and technological intensity.