The impact of economic sanctions on international trade in High-Tech products and semiconductors

Sammanfattning: In 2018, the United States set in motion a comprehensive series of sanctions, which served as the catalyst for a notable technology and trade dispute. This dispute spanned a wide array of Chinese products, semiconductors among them, and marked a significant turning point in the evolving landscape of international commerce and technological competition. This study analyses the effect of sanctions on High-Tech and semiconductor products during the 2016-2019 period using quarterly data. Employing the gravity model of trade and the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood estimator, the study finds statistically non-significant results for High-Technology products. However, semiconductor exports in general ended up increasing 10 percent despite the sanctions being put in place. The findings indicate that both US exports and imports have experienced growth within the timeframe of measurement.