U.S. Exports, Imports, and Internal Migration: A Balanced View of China Syndrome.

Abstract: This paper revisits previous findings and examines whether trade exposure to increased import competition has a significant impact on local labor markets. Previous literature has shown that higher imports from China lead to higher unemployment, reduced wages, and slower population growth in U.S. local labor markets with import-competitive manufacturing industries.

I replicate the specifications of Autor et al. (2013) and Greenland et al. (2019), extending the period of analysis from 1990–2007 to 1990–2010 and incorporating alternative measures of trade exposure for U.S. commuting zones. The coefficient on manufacturing employment in the working-age population under the Chinese comparative advantage model is -0.305, which is less than half (43%) of the coefficient in the gross Chinese imports model. Although trade exposure reduces manufacturing employment, models using net Chinese exports per worker or exposure to final goods and intermediate inputs reveal a statistically significant positive effect on average manufacturing wages.

When controlling for preexisting population trends, the coefficient on trade exposure for commuting zone population adjustments using domestic and international exposure to Chinese exports, as well as the coefficient from the comparative advantage China-U.S. model, is reduced to 57% and 28%, respectively, compared to the model using Chinese imports per worker. Analysis using IPUMS and Census data shows significant reductions in the population growth of working-age individuals and younger cohorts.