Tariffs and Vietnam’s exports of Mach and Elec products to CPTPP partners

Mach and Elec is a vital sector greatly contributing to Vietnam’s economic growth and the trade liberalization mechanism in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) has further enhanced our opportunities to boost exporting these products. Hence, in this paper, we made the first attempt to analyze the impact of tariffs on Vietnam’s export of Mach and Elec products to partners within CPTPP. This study utilized a modified gravity model and simultaneous quantile regression to analyze Vietnam’s export turnover of machinery and electronic products to 10 CPTPP member countries from 2005 to 2020 on different quantiles of the export distribution. The primary variable of interest was the applied tariffs (AHS). The results indicate that the most preferential tariff available still has a significantly detrimental impact on Vietnam’s export turnover. Also, exports of Mach and Elec products to larger markets in CPTPP tend to be more affected by tariffs than smaller ones. Our research findings have important implications for Vietnam enterprises and the government exporting machinery and electronic products to make the most of the preferential tariff under the CPTPP agreement.