The impact of foreign trade on the economic growth of Iraq (1980-2020)

The issue of economic growth and its connection to foreign trade is one of the issues that has become of great importance to all countries, especially developing countries such as Iraq, as trade openness is of great importance in supporting the economy. In general, there are many studies that focused on the advantages of foreign trade and its positive impact on economy, as well as there are studies that conclude that foreign trade may also have a negative impact on GDP growth. Iraq is considered one of the developing countries that seeks to increase its domestic product and achieve growth that is reflected in the standard of living of the Iraqi citizen through the development of its oil and non-oil exports and its good trade relations with other countries of the world, in addition to making better use of capital and work. This study seeks to explore the relationship between foreign trade and the growth of Iraq's GDP from 1980 to 2020 by taking the variables of trade openness, capital, and work as independent variables, and the GDP variable as a dependent variable. In this thesis, the researcher relied on the testing approach associated with the ARDL model, which was developed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) to test the relationship between GDP and foreign trade. It was found from the results that the openness, Capital and labor force have positive but not statistically significant effects on economic growth in Iraq in the long run. The results also indicate that trade openness, has positive and significant effects on economic growth represented by the gross domestic product in the short term, i.e. the labor force and capital has a positive but not a significant effects on economic growth in the short term in Iraq between 1980 and 2020 .