The Role of the U.S. Dollar in International Trade

This study examines the J-curve phenomenon for the U.S. agricultural trade and compares the effect on agricultural trade relative to U.S. non-agricultural trade. For this purpose, the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model is adopted to estimate bilateral trade data between the United States and her three major trading partners -- Japan, Canada, and Mexico. We find little evidence of the J-curve for U.S. agricultural trade with Japan, Canada, and Mexico. For non-agricultural trade, on the other hand, the behavior of U.S. trade with industrialized economies such as Japan and Canada follows the J-curve, but not with developing economies such as Mexico.