This study expands the classical model of the Free Trade Area(FTA) and designs the theoretical framework for analyzing the trade effects of agricultural products in the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) from the perspectives of the great power trade model, tariff differences, and complementarity among trade products. The synthetic control method is utilized to evaluate the trade effects of agricultural products by taking China-ASEAN as a whole and for each member country of ASEAN during the period from 1995 to 2020. The results show that: Firstly, the implementation of CAFTA had a significant impact on the agricultural products between China and ASEAN. The growth of agricultural product trade between China and ASEAN mainly comes from the trade creation effect rather than trade diversion effects. Secondly, with the gradual reduction of bilateral tariffs, both the import and export effects of agricultural products between China and ASEAN have shown a trend of gradual expansion. Thirdly, CAFTA displayed a heterogeneous impact on the trade effects of agricultural products between different ASEAN countries and China. The greater the complementarity and openness is, the larger the trade creation effects in bilateral agricultural trade will be. Therefore, implementing a higher-level FTA strategy is beneficial for further expanding China's import and export channels for agricultural products and improving the economic welfare of society.
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