THE IMPACT OF SINO-USA TRADE WAR ON USA FARM BANKRUPTCIES
The Sino-USA trade war has raised concerns on the USA agricultural economy as farm bankruptcies rose up. While media reports tend to attribute the increase in farm bankruptcy to the trade war, there are many other factors affecting the farm sector. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to determine whether the trade war has a net effect on farm bankruptcy. This study utilized monthly estimate of variables on state level from 2007 to 2019. Chapter 12 bankruptcy number and rate are applied as dependent variables. We divided our factors into agricultural variables, economic variables, and government variables apart from the trade war. Our result confirmed that the trade war has a positive effect on farm bankruptcy. Economic factors (net charge-offs of farm loans, U.S. real GDP, the average effective interest rate), agricultural factors (soybean export volume, PPI of farm products, U.S. anomaly wet areas percentage) also produced significant results.