US-China trade war did not bring American firms home, research finds

The trade war between the United States and China failed to prompt American businesses to leave the Chinese market, with costs from tariffs instead passed along to consumers, new research found.

In a paper published on the preprint platform SSRN this month, researchers Samantha Vortherms and Jiakun Jack Zhang argued that US tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese products – launched in mid-2018 to bring US companies home – hurt the US economy and did not successfully pressure China to change its economic policies.