TRADE IN GOODS

As international trade became more sophisticated, the ‘traditional' trade in goods topics seemed to be entering an extinction phase and be substituted by other forms of trade regulation, such as technical barriers or sanitary measures. However, in recent years and for different reasons, many of them reclaimed their relevance. This chapter also discusses an essential tool for the operation of trade in goods, which is tariff classification, as well as an often overlooked but fundamental issue in trade in goods regulation, which are the rules of origin. Global value chain operations could not be conceived without rules of origin. Finally, the COVID 19 pandemic revealed how vulnerable international trade could be to import and export restrictions, such as quotas or licences, and how important trade facilitation could be to bolster trade and even to save lives. © Oxford University Press 2022. All rights reserved.

An innovative tool for cost control under fragmented scenarios: The container freight index microinsurance.

With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, global container freights have increased dramatically since the second half of 2020, which has significantly hampered the booking activities of fragmented transportation space for small and medium-sized import and export enterprises (SMIEEs). To provide SMIEEs with an effective tool for controlling shipping costs, we propose the design principles of index microinsurance under fragmented scenarios and design the container freight index microinsurance (CFIM) based on a comprehensive analysis of the term, compensation and share structures. We further establish the pricing model for the CFIM and selection procedure for product optimization, and illustrate the framework with a case study based on the data of the China Containerized Freight Index Europe Service, which demonstrates the good performance of the designed product even under extreme market conditions. The design principles proposed can shed light on the innovation of index microinsurance product that meets fragmented needs and the newly designed CFIM, along with the pricing and optimization procedure, provides practitioners with useful tools for cost control.

Food Safety in Global Trade: Opportunities and Challenges to Trade Harmonization

International agri-food trade has grown significantly over recent decades with food and socio-economic security in many countries increasingly reliant on safe and efficient import and export regulation that are harmonized with international standards. This Article explores outputs of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, particularly the Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems, in facilitating trade in safe food, their importance to World Trade Organization, trade agreements and disputes, and opportunities to assist countries harmonize with Codex norms. Challenges to trade in safe food, the rise in E-commerce and food fraud, and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, are also discussed, as is the utility of digital technologies to address these challenges.

Appeal of word of mouth: Influences of public opinions and sentiment on ports in corporate choice of import and export trade in the post-COVID-19 era.

With the advent of the post-COVID-19 era, corporate managers of import and export trade are now more sensitive in their daily work, and their decisions are more likely to be influenced by the emotional bias of public opinions, especially regarding cooperation with trade ports of frequent circulation. Therefore, how to manage public opinion and sentiment in the post-COVID-19 era will be a new opportunity and challenge for the marketing management of ports. For the above considerations, through the same frequency verification between public opinions and sentiment on ports and corporate choice of import and export trade, and through analysis of the influence mechanism, the present study demonstrates the positive effects of public opinions and sentiment on ports in corporate choice of import and export trade in the post-COVID-19 era, verifies the significance of shaping word of mouth in port management, puts forward the great role of public opinions and sentiment in the cognitive and emotional empathy in the choice of import and export trade, and provides theoretical guidance for port managers' strategic choices in the post-COVID-19 era.

Research on the Impact of COVID-19 on Import and Export Strategies

Due to the spread of COVID-19, the public health crisis is bound to have a huge impact on the world economy and international trade. How to study the import and export strategies under the coronavirus pandemic has become a major issue that many scholars need to solve urgently. Therefore, a two-stage game model is constructed, and the reverse solution method is used to obtain the optimal output of enterprises in importing countries and exporting countries before and after the outbreak of pandemic, as well as the optimal subsidies for enterprises from exporting countries and the optimal import quarantine rate for importing countries. Based on the game between the two countries without the pandemic outbreak, the impact of the pandemic on the output, profits, and social welfare of enterprises in the two countries was compared. Enterprises in exporting countries face double threats from the pandemic and import quarantine fees. The increase in import quarantine fees reduces the social welfare of exporting countries. In order to effectively control the spread of the pandemic, subsidies are an effective means to restore exports to normal. Reasonable collection of import quarantine fees by importing countries can promote bilateral trade, but an excessive collection will be counterproductive. The governments of exporting countries should establish emergency mechanisms and relevant subsidy policies, and enterprises should continuously improve their competitiveness. At the same time, countries should abandon the concept of trade protection and negotiate and cooperate to jointly deal with the pandemic.

An Epidemiological Study to Investigate Links between Atmospheric Pollution from Farming and SARS-CoV-2 Mortality.

Exposure to atmospheric particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide has been linked to SARS-CoV-2 infection and death. We hypothesized that long-term exposure to farming-related air pollutants might predispose to an increased risk of COVID-19-related death. To test this hypothesis, we performed an ecological study of five Italian Regions (Piedmont, Lombardy, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna and Sicily), linking all-cause mortality by province (administrative entities within regions) to data on atmospheric concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) and ammonia (NH3), which are mainly produced by agricultural activities. The study outcome was change in all-cause mortality during March-April 2020 compared with March-April 2015-2019 (period). We estimated all-cause mortality rate ratios (MRRs) by multivariate negative binomial regression models adjusting for air temperature, humidity, international import-export, gross domestic product and population density. We documented a 6.9% excess in MRR (proxy for COVID-19 mortality) for each tonne/km2 increase in NH3 emissions, explained by the interaction of the period variable with NH3 exposure, considering all pollutants together. Despite the limitations of the ecological design of the study, following the precautionary principle, we recommend the implementation of public health measures to limit environmental NH3 exposure, particularly while the COVID-19 pandemic continues. Future studies are needed to investigate any causal link between COVID-19 and farming-related pollution.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Import and Export Trade

Motivation: This article discusses the impact of COVID-19 on import and export trade, and what roles the degree of epidemic spread, the degree of malignancy, and the governments' epidemic prevention and control responses have played in the waves of COVID-19 infections. Premise: Since the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the world health system and has profoundly affected the global economy and import and export trade. The volume of import and export trade in most countries around the world has experienced a significant decline. The global supply chain system has suffered huge challenges due to the epidemic, its management, and each country's governmental response. Approach: This article describes the spread and development of COVID-19 and its phased impact on international trade. This article also discusses the impact mechanism of the epidemic on international import and export trade and the global supply chain system. The study uses trend analysis and fixed effects models to analyze the influence factor on import and export trade of nine major economies (the United States, China, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada, India, and Australia) in 2020. Results: This study explores COVID-19's effects on international import and export trade. It estimates the impact of COVID-19 on the import and export trade of each country, discussing the relationship between the whole epidemic situation, the number of epidemic infections and deaths, and how governments responded to international trade in this epidemic. The study also groups nine countries from four aspects and analyzes the differences in the impact of import and export trade among different groups. Conclusion: This study has found that for most countries, the COVID-19 epidemic had greater impact on the import trade than export trade. The number of deaths caused by the epidemic had a greater impact on import and export trade than the number of epidemic infections. Each government's epidemic prevention and control policy had a negative impact on the import and export trade. Discovering appropriate policies that could reduce the impact on the economy while preventing and controlling an epidemic is of great importance. The further impact of COVID-19 might change the global industrial layout in the future, but the global supply chain system will not experience huge changes in the short term. Consistency: This research explores the fluctuations and the recovery cycles of the international trading system. The quantitative analysis finds out the negative effects of regional control policies and mobility restriction policies in different countries. It contributes to the business for coping with sudden risks in international supply chain system.

Prospects of china-mongolia-russia trade in the light of the covid-19 pandemic

Relevance. China, Mongolia, and Russia are among each other’s major trade partners. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a large impact on global trade, which creates the need to analyze further prospects of the trilateral cooperation between China, Mongolia and Russia. Research objective. This study aims to analyze China-Mongolia-Russia trade cooperation in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data and methods. This article applies a comparative analysis method to exa-mine the development and changes in import and export trade between China, Mongolia, and Russia before and after the beginning of the project of the Chi-na-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor, from 2014 to 2020. The research relies on the data from the China Trade and Foreign Economy Statistical Yearbook, Northeast Asia Economic Statistics of Sea of Japan Economic Research Institute, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, Russian Customs, and National Bureau of Statistics of Mongolia. Results. Along with the realization of the medium and short-term goal of raising the volume of trade turnover within the Corridor, the three countries seek to play more and more important roles as each other’s trade partners. It is observed that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the volume of trade has not been significant, and thus the fundamental premises of trilateral trade cooperation have remained largely unchanged. Conclusions. To increase the volume of trade between China, Mongolia and Russia, it is necessary to improve the trade structure, reduce tariffs, establish free trade areas and actively promote the diversification of trade cooperation. © 2021, Ural University Press. All rights reserved.

The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Imports and Exports in China, Japan, and South Korea.

In this paper, time-series and cross-country data spanning from January 2020 to December 2020 are adopted to empirically investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on exports and imports in China, Japan, and South Korea. In the models, industrial production, trade openness, government response (including monetary and fiscal intervention), and the pandemic impact of major trade partners are controlled. In addition, the three countries, China, Japan, and South Korea, are also estimated separately in consideration of the cross-country disparity. The results show that domestic epidemics in China, Japan, and South Korea have a non-significant (statistically significant) effect on imports, but are negatively correlated with exports in Japan; epidemics in major trading partners are negatively correlated with imports in Japan and positively correlated with exports in China and South Korea; and government intervention is positively correlated with imports in China and positively correlated with exports in China, Japan, and South Korea.

International trade as critical parameter of COVID-19 spread that outclasses demographic, economic, environmental, and pollution factors.

The novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that caused the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), generating high numbers of COVID-19 related infected individuals and deaths, is still circulating in 2021 with new variants of the coronavirus, such that the state of emergency remains in manifold countries. Currently, there is still a lack of a full understanding of the factors determining the COVID-19 diffusion that clarify the causes of the variability of infections across different provinces and regions within countries. The main goal of this study is to explain new and main determinants underlying the diffusion of COVID-19 in society. This study focuses on international trade because this factor, in a globalized world, can synthetize different drivers of virus spread, such as mobility patterns, economic potentialities, and social interactions of an investigated areas. A case study research is performed on 107 provinces of Italy, one of the first countries to experience a rapid increase in confirmed cases and deaths. Statistical analyses from March 2020 to February 2021 suggest that total import and export of provinces has a high association with confirmed cases over time (average r > 0.78, p-value <.001). Overall, then, this study suggests total import and export as complex indicator of COVID-19 transmission dynamics that outclasses other common parameters used to justify the COVID-19 spread, given by economic, demographic, environmental, and climate factors. In addition, this study proposes, for the first time, a time-dependent correlation analysis between trade data and COVID-19 infection cases to explain the relation between confirmed cases and social interactions that are a main source of the diffusion of SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent negative impact in society. These novel findings have main theoretical and practical implications directed to include a new parameter in modelling of the diffusion of COVID-19 pandemic to support effective policy responses of crisis management directed to constrain the impact of COVID-19 pandemic and similar infectious diseases in society.