Semester of Graduation

Spring 2026

Degree

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Following the 2018-19 U.S.-China trade war, major U.S. trading partners, including China, the European Union, Canada, Mexico, Turkey, and India, imposed retaliatory tariffs on selected U.S. agricultural products, generating trade diversion opportunities for third-country exporters. This study examines how pre-existing trade structures and contemporaneous trade agreements conditioned the ability of third-country exporters to absorb these diverted trade flows.

The study implemented a triple difference-in-differences (DDD) framework that incorporated pre-trade war exporter share and importer market concentration as moderator variables. The model is estimated using the Poisson Pseudo-Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator with high-dimensional fixed effects on annual bilateral trade data from 2017 to 2019 at the HS 6-digit level, covering 696 agricultural products from the Base pour l'Analyse du Commerce International (BACI) database maintained by the Centre d'Études Prospectives et d'Informations Internationales (CEPII). The absence of pre-trends in the event study supports the DDD identification strategy.

Introducing heterogeneity through the DDD framework with moderating variables reveals substantial variation in third-country trade diversion effects. At the aggregate level, third-country gains following retaliation are positively associated with above-average pre-trade war market share, and the effect increases from bulk to intermediate and consumer-oriented commodities. Whereas diversion effects weaken as importer market concentration increases above the average level at both the aggregate level and for bulk commodities, while positively affecting consumer-oriented commodities. The impact of contemporaneous trade agreements has a greater influence on bulk and consumer commodities. However, study suggest on in-depth analysis. Overall, the findings evidenced that third-country trade diversion following retaliation is uneven and conditioned by pre-existing trade conditions and product categories. Therefore, the current study provides evidence on how trade diversification rewires global agricultural trade, supported by pre-existing conditions, to mitigate negative impacts such as food security challenges imposed by trade shocks.

Date

3-26-2026

Committee Chair

Lim, Sunghun

LSU Acknowledgement

1

LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment

1

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