Posted on 02/16/2020 6:22:45 PM PST by BeauBo
The annual 2019 trade figures for the United States came out last week, heralding some encouraging news. America’s enormous international trade deficit actually declined slightly from 2018. This was the first decrease in six years, with the deficit in goods and services dropping 1.7%, to $616.8 billion.
Better yet, America’s bilateral trade deficit with China fell for the first time in four years, dropping a hefty 17.6%, to $345.6 billion.
These are promising numbers and they show that tariffs on Chinese products are successfully moving the needle on U.S. trade flows. In fact, America’s 2019 imports from China actually fell $87.4 billion from the all-time high set in 2018...
With the tariffs underway, the United States should pursue an “ABC” strategy: “Anywhere But China.” The tariffs are already helping to drive production out of China and into other countries. That’s a good thing. But in order to constrain China’s rise, the United States should continue to encourage manufacturing to move away from mainland China.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
As the author notes however, we should not be dependent on an essentially hostile communist China for anything, but we are for a lot of stuff.
The grand Strategic de-coupling of the US and communist Chinese economy will probably continue this year. The tariffs remain in place, and many important non-tariff factors have shifted, but have not yet had their effects show in the quarterly or annual numbers.
The effect of the corona virus alone might be another strong driver to get more production to shift out of China.
China trade Ping.
Much of China’s low cost production is being outsourced by them to countries like Cambodia, Vietnam,Laos, Burma, Bangladesh or North Korea
Doesn’t mean we should follow Trump’s lead.He wants a better deal and his predecessors wouldn’t help. I’ll just trust him.
Bat soup. Hot dogs. Pangolin pie. Where else are you gonna get that stuff?
Maybe we can leverage this into COOL (Country Of Origin Labeling)?
While I think that we should still greatly reduce importing goods from China I think it would be a mistake to flappy eliminate trade with them. countries with cordial business relationships are much less less likely to go to war with each other.
The coronavirus was an act of war. They need to pay. If not a joint venture annihilation by the US and Russia, then an “involuntary isolation” where we pull out of china and burn everything we leave behind. We kick their POS students out of our universities and cities and force universities to stop accepting money/stop pandering to this garbage country and their evil leaders.
I like cheap Chinese goods and I don’t care for protectionist opinion.
Israel, a true partner in freedom and liberty.
The coronavirus was an act of war. They need to pay.
Oh they are paying for it. When your crematoriums cant keep up with the amount of people your government has killed, trust me, the commies are paying. Its just a matter of a breaking point before the Chinese people decide that they are going to die anyways. Its either via a virus or a quick bullet. Noting left to loose!
Those Chinese people really need guns bad.
We should never ‘loose’ our guns.
“If it can’t be made in America, it should be made Anywhere But China”
But where, exactly, is something ‘made’? Easy example: Most of the drugs used in the United States are ‘made’ in India.
Sounds like China can’t hold our throats regarding drugs.
EXCEPT where are the ingredients India uses sourced? You guessed it, China?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to bring down trade with China, and 17% is outstanding in one year. But it will take a HUGE EFFORT to completely clear ourselves of China’s tentacles, or even come close.
“I like cheap Chinese goods”
The idea is to get equally cheap goods, from Anybody But China - so the profits are no longer used as a weapon against us (e.g. building nuclear missiles aimed at our citie).
If for no other reason, companies should move their production out of China because we can now clearly see how Chinese carelessness can quickly bring production to a halt, possibly for many months.
Either that or the virus will run its course and everything will calm down.
These are quite encouraging numbers, esp. if they are not adjusted yet for US economic growth (which, all else being equal, would increase the trade deficit numbers a bit.)
POTUS should, well, TRUMPet this!
Hopefully the latest trade agreement with China will help further, especially on the US’ exports side, which helps grow our economy.
Thank God you don’t have any power
I’d be ok with a goal of a minimum of 25% of production of “critical” items (such as pharmaceuticals) to be sourced in the US (including ingredients, components, etc.), and not over 50% from any one country.
That much alternate capacity makes it quite a bit easier to ramp up alternate production if a primary supplier goes down.
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