Sanction Spillover and Trade Diversification

How do sanctions affect third-party states? This research, conducted with Ruofan Ma (Harvard), examines how states respond to the systemic risks caused by sanctions by diversifying their trade portfolios. Analyzing trade concentration and sanction data from 1990 to 2020 and also looking at the specific case of President Trump's 2018 national security tariffs, we find that states diversify their trading partners when sanctions disrupt their existing trade partner networks. These findings highlight the spillover effects of sanctions and the dynamics of trade interdependence.

Christina L. Davis is the Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics in the Department of Government and Director of the Program on U.S.-Japan Relations at Harvard University. She studies the politics and foreign policy of Japan, East Asia, and international organizations with a focus on trade policy. She is the author of Discriminatory Clubs: The Geopolitics of International Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2023) and Why Adjudicate? Enforcing Trade Rules in the WTO (Princeton University Press, 2012), as well as numerous other publications in leading journals.

This seminar will be held in E40-496 (Pye Room) and is brought to you by CIS, Political Science, and the International Political Economy of Finance and Economic Development working group. Lunch will be available. Please RSVP here.

Contact Kate Danahy at kdanahy@mit.edu with any questions. 

This event is part of the CIS Global Research & Policy Seminar Series. Join our mailing list here to learn about upcoming seminars in the series.