Anxiety or pain? The impact of tariffs and uncertainty on Chinese firms in the trade war
通过分析上市公司年报文本，构建企业层面的贸易政策不确定性指标，发现中美关税上升加剧了企业不确定性，尤其对小型企业影响更大，进而导致投资、研发和利润分别下降2.3%、2.3%和11.5%。
The unexpected outbreak of the U.S.-China trade war led to dramatic increases in the import and export tariffs confronting Chinese firms, and ushered in an era of unprecedented trade policy uncertainty (TPU). To assess the effects of this development on the operations of Chinese firms we adopt a new textual analysis approach to listed firms’ annual reports that allows us to create measures of TPU that vary over firms and time. Linking our new TPU measures to firm-level trade war exposure shows that increases in U.S. tariffs and Chinese retaliatory tariffs elevated firm-level TPU. The effects of Chinese firm-level tariff changes on firm TPU are heterogeneous: smaller firms experienced the most pronounced increases while firms that were more diversified in terms of partner countries were more insulated. Importantly, connecting firm-level increases in TPU during the trade war with subsequent firm performance reveals notable impairment of firm operations. Our estimates indicate that Chinese firms hit by a one standard deviation increase in TPU during the trade war reduced firm-level investment, R&D expenditures, and profits by 2.3, 2.3, and 11.5 percent, respectively.