Impact of RMB Appreciation on Trade and Labor Markets of China and the USA: A Multi-country Comparative General Equilibrium Model

Since the recent economic crisis, the undervaluation of China's exchange rate has been a focus in the debate on the global policy mix. Using a non-competitive input-output table, we establish a comparative-static general equilibrium model to simulate the impact of real exchange rate changes on Sino-US trade and labor markets. The simulation shows that the impacts of a 10-percent RMB revaluation on the trade surplus of China and the labor market of the USA are more modest than is generally perceived, and the negative impact on the output of the non-processing industry in China is more significant than that on the processing industry. The Sino-US trade imbalance will continue to deteriorate, China's non-processing trade surplus will decline and the processing trade will increase, with the combined effect being small. For the USA, labor-intensive goods imported from China will shift to different Asian countries instead of transferring back to the US market. The simulation results indicate that the impacts of an RMB revaluation on both Chinese and US labor markets would be limited.