Machine learning forecasting of USA and PRC balance of trade in context of mutual sanctions

Institute of Technology and Business, School of Expertness and Valuation, Okružní 517/10, 37001 české Budějovice Czech Republic

^* Corresponding author: vochozka@mail.vstecb.cz

Abstract

The USA decided to regulate the trade more by imposing tariffs on specific types of traded goods. It is therefore more interesting to find out whether the current technologies based on artificial intelligence with time series influenced by extraordinary factors such as the trade war between two powers are able to work. The objective of the contribution is to examine and subsequently equalize two time series – the USA import from the PRC and the USA export to the PRC. The dataset shows the course of the time series at monthly intervals between January 2000 and July 2019. 10,000 multilayer perceptron networks (MLP) are generated, out of which 5 with the best characteristics are retained. It has been proved that multilayer perceptron networks are a suitable tool for forecasting the development of the time series if there are no sudden fluctuations. Mutual sanctions of both states did not affect the result of machine learning forecasting.