• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.5
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• pp.25-45
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• 2018

This paper estimates the export losses of the Korean domestic automobile industry due to US trade pressure and its economic ripple effects. Using the HS 6 digit tariff and export data from 2010 to 2017, this paper estimates the tariff elasticity of Korea's US automobile exports against a US tariff increase by applying the Poisson Pseudo maximum likelihood estimation method. After estimating Korea's export losses to the US in three trade pressure scenarios, we estimate its impact on Korean domestic production, value-added and job creation by applying the tariff impact accumulation model based on the industry input-output analysis. Empirical results show that the impact of 25% global tariff by the US on the Korean domestic economy is estimated to result in $30.8 billion in export losses for the five years from 2019 to 2023, about 300 thousand job losses, 88.0 trillion in production inducement losses, and 24.0 trillion in value-added inducement losses. The impacts of withdrawal of the automobile tariff concession are estimated at $4.27 billion export losses and 41.7 thousand job losses. A 15% tariff rate on automobile parts for 3 years is estimated to result in $1.93 billion export losses and 18.7 thousand job losses.