TY  - JOUR
AU  - Pierce,Justin R.
AU  - Schott,Peter K.
TI  - The Surprisingly Swift Decline of U.S. Manufacturing Employment
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 18655
PY  - 2012
Y2  - December 2012
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18655
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w18655.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Justin R. Pierce
Federal Reserve Board
20th and C ST NW
Washington, DC 20551
Tel: 202-452-2981
Fax: 202-736-1937
E-Mail: justin.r.pierce@frb.gov

Peter K. Schott
Yale School of Management
135 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT 06520-8200
Tel: 203/436-4260
Fax: 203/432-6974
E-Mail: peter.schott@yale.edu
AB  - This paper finds a link between the sharp drop in U.S. manufacturing employment after 2001 and the elimination of trade policy uncertainty resulting from the U.S. granting of permanent normal trade relations to China in late 2000. We find that industries where the threat of tariff hikes declines the most experience greater employment loss due to suppressed job creation, exaggerated job destruction and a substitution away from low-skill workers. We show that these policy-related employment losses coincide with a relative acceleration of U.S. imports from China, the number of U.S. firms importing from China, the number of Chinese firms exporting to the U.S., and the number of U.S.-China importer-exporter pairs.
ER  -