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Meanwhile US exports to China are eating dirt. This trade war is not going well for America, although this slow growth headline will be used to bolster a false

Meanwhile US exports to China are eating dirt. This trade war is not going well for America, although this slow growth headline will be used to bolster a false narrative: https://mobile.twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1073234887761641475 https://mobile.twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1073234887...

adventured 8y ago
> Meanwhile US exports to China are eating dirt. US exports to China for 2018 will be around $123-$126 billion. That compares to $129 billion for 2017, and $115 billion for 2016 and 2015. So US exports will be up vs 2016 & 2015, and down a mere couple billion versus 2017. Meaningless in other words. Your premise is incorrect. So far China is paying for most of the trade war [1] through its producers slashing prices and by allowing its Yuan to drop in value (which is a wealth transfer from the Chinese people to prop up its exporters so they can hopefully run in place rather than get hit hard). That's why the US isn't seeing any consequential pricing / inflationary pressure at all from the trade war. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china-is-paying-for-most-of-trump-s-trade-war-research-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china-is-...
- fspeech 8y ago
  Chinese import growth over 2018 was mostly in the double digit range (averaged 14.6% Jan. through Nov.). Its imports from Europe, Japan and ASEAN grew 10% or higher. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/total-imports-growth https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/total-imports-gr...
  - adventured 8y ago
    They're not identical markets. Both Japan and the EU (Germany with the world's largest trade surplus) have larger export markets in relation to the size of their economies than the US does. That's also one reason the US runs perpetually large trade deficits with Japan and the EU. US exports to China haven't gone up meaningfully since 2013 (in fact they declined 2013 vs 2015/2016). That's not the case with the EU and Japan. Has nothing to do with the trade war, which didn't exist in 2013-2016, it has to do with what (and where) the US manufactures and exports. It's also worth noting that Chinese manufacturing is to one extent or another a representation (proxy) for the US consumer economy, since major US corporations utilize China for so much manufacturing (part of the where and why reference in the last paragraph). US companies make products in China and then sell them to US consumers, which complicates the import/export discussion. This is pointed out constantly in critical discussions (eg about the environment or labor & wages), and ignored in discussions like these where it's an inconvenient fact. Over time the EU and Japan have outsourced less of their major manufacturing to China than what the US has.
    - fspeech 8y ago
      If you look at the graph I provided and zoom out to the 5 year chart, you would see a fairly large drop in Chinese imports around 2015-16. Part of that might have been due to commodity price drops, but I suspect the correlation of US export to China with Chinese total import is higher than you gave credit for, in a normal year that is.
- nihonde 8y ago
  Wrong. China is benefitting from an uptick in orders due to tariffs. Also, US exports are down, despite your attempt to write the dip off: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-10-05/u-s-trade-gap-hits-six-month-high-as-soybean-exports-plunge-28 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti... And that’s from back in October. It’s a loss no matter how you spin it.
  - adventured 8y ago
    Saying I'm wrong, doesn't make it so. Your claim - that US exports are "eating dirt" - is unsupported by the actual export numbers. US Exports are down a few billion dollars only vs 2017, and they're up vs 2015 and 2016. In a $20.5 trillion economy it's entirely meaningless to see a $3 or $5 billion drop in exports to China and doesn't square with your outlandish claim about dirt eating. China is benefitting from what's called front-loading, which is a temporary bump in exports to beat the implementation of tariffs. It has been widely discussed in dozens of business publications over the last few months (including some breathless articles about ships desperately racing to beat the tariff dates), there's nothing surprising about it.
    - nihonde 8y ago
      The gap is what matters, not the year over year totals. Trump’s stated objective was to lower the trade gap and he (so far) is failing. Front loading is evidence that US demand is as high as ever. US companies have no real options other than Chinese suppliers and that’s why they’re buying as much as possible ahead of Trump’s tarrifs, which only really punish US buyers and the end consumers. The fact that China can use its currency to fight this trade war is only more evidence that the US is being outmaneuvered. You can spin it all day long, but the US soybean farmers and steelworkers are not winning this trade war. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/222BBB70-F808-11E8-84A6-E0B25E1938B1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/g...
hueving 8y ago
"Hug a business owner or farmer who exports to China" is the equivalent of a "think of the children" argument. It ignores how little relevance they have in the overall trade with China in order to oversize a problem. See the sibling comment for how little the total numbers have declined. Someone is going to get fucked in a tariff change. Tariff changes area always a question of greater good.
jayalpha 8y ago
1. the Trade balance is bullocks (how do Apple iphones appear in it?) The term dark matter was coined in 2006 by some Harvard economists https://www.dbs.com/aics/pdfController.page?pdfpath=/content/article/pdf/AIO/042018/180420_insights_weekly_chinaus_trade_dynamic_and_dark_matter.pdf https://www.dbs.com/aics/pdfController.page?pdfpath=/content... 2. I think the trade war is going pretty well for the US. They basically can't lose it this is why I don't understand that Xi did not compromise in the first place.

adventured 8y ago

> Meanwhile US exports to China are eating dirt. US exports to China for 2018 will be around $123-$126 billion. That compares to $129 billion for 2017, and $115 billion for 2016 and 2015. So US exports will be up vs 2016 & 2015, and down a mere couple billion versus 2017. Meaningless in other words. Your premise is incorrect. So far China is paying for most of the trade war [1] through its producers slashing prices and by allowing its Yuan to drop in value (which is a wealth transfer from the Chinese people to prop up its exporters so they can hopefully run in place rather than get hit hard). That's why the US isn't seeing any consequential pricing / inflationary pressure at all from the trade war. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china-is-paying-for-most-of-trump-s-trade-war-research-says https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-19/china-is-...

fspeech 8y ago
Chinese import growth over 2018 was mostly in the double digit range (averaged 14.6% Jan. through Nov.). Its imports from Europe, Japan and ASEAN grew 10% or higher. https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/total-imports-growth https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/china/total-imports-gr...
- adventured 8y ago
  They're not identical markets. Both Japan and the EU (Germany with the world's largest trade surplus) have larger export markets in relation to the size of their economies than the US does. That's also one reason the US runs perpetually large trade deficits with Japan and the EU. US exports to China haven't gone up meaningfully since 2013 (in fact they declined 2013 vs 2015/2016). That's not the case with the EU and Japan. Has nothing to do with the trade war, which didn't exist in 2013-2016, it has to do with what (and where) the US manufactures and exports. It's also worth noting that Chinese manufacturing is to one extent or another a representation (proxy) for the US consumer economy, since major US corporations utilize China for so much manufacturing (part of the where and why reference in the last paragraph). US companies make products in China and then sell them to US consumers, which complicates the import/export discussion. This is pointed out constantly in critical discussions (eg about the environment or labor & wages), and ignored in discussions like these where it's an inconvenient fact. Over time the EU and Japan have outsourced less of their major manufacturing to China than what the US has.
  - fspeech 8y ago
    If you look at the graph I provided and zoom out to the 5 year chart, you would see a fairly large drop in Chinese imports around 2015-16. Part of that might have been due to commodity price drops, but I suspect the correlation of US export to China with Chinese total import is higher than you gave credit for, in a normal year that is.
nihonde 8y ago
Wrong. China is benefitting from an uptick in orders due to tariffs. Also, US exports are down, despite your attempt to write the dip off: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-10-05/u-s-trade-gap-hits-six-month-high-as-soybean-exports-plunge-28 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti... And that’s from back in October. It’s a loss no matter how you spin it.
- adventured 8y ago
  Saying I'm wrong, doesn't make it so. Your claim - that US exports are "eating dirt" - is unsupported by the actual export numbers. US Exports are down a few billion dollars only vs 2017, and they're up vs 2015 and 2016. In a $20.5 trillion economy it's entirely meaningless to see a $3 or $5 billion drop in exports to China and doesn't square with your outlandish claim about dirt eating. China is benefitting from what's called front-loading, which is a temporary bump in exports to beat the implementation of tariffs. It has been widely discussed in dozens of business publications over the last few months (including some breathless articles about ships desperately racing to beat the tariff dates), there's nothing surprising about it.
  - nihonde 8y ago
    The gap is what matters, not the year over year totals. Trump’s stated objective was to lower the trade gap and he (so far) is failing. Front loading is evidence that US demand is as high as ever. US companies have no real options other than Chinese suppliers and that’s why they’re buying as much as possible ahead of Trump’s tarrifs, which only really punish US buyers and the end consumers. The fact that China can use its currency to fight this trade war is only more evidence that the US is being outmaneuvered. You can spin it all day long, but the US soybean farmers and steelworkers are not winning this trade war. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/222BBB70-F808-11E8-84A6-E0B25E1938B1 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/g...

hueving 8y ago

"Hug a business owner or farmer who exports to China" is the equivalent of a "think of the children" argument. It ignores how little relevance they have in the overall trade with China in order to oversize a problem. See the sibling comment for how little the total numbers have declined. Someone is going to get fucked in a tariff change. Tariff changes area always a question of greater good.

jayalpha 8y ago

1. the Trade balance is bullocks (how do Apple iphones appear in it?) The term dark matter was coined in 2006 by some Harvard economists https://www.dbs.com/aics/pdfController.page?pdfpath=/content/article/pdf/AIO/042018/180420_insights_weekly_chinaus_trade_dynamic_and_dark_matter.pdf https://www.dbs.com/aics/pdfController.page?pdfpath=/content... 2. I think the trade war is going pretty well for the US. They basically can't lose it this is why I don't understand that Xi did not compromise in the first place.