>It will soon be much more than 30% of GDP. The US seems to have forgotten that the economy is not a zero-sum game. What matters most is trade balance. If some

>It will soon be much more than 30% of GDP. The US seems to have forgotten that the economy is not a zero-sum game. What matters most is trade balance. If somehow a trade is completely balanced, which is quite unlikely, then it's zero-sum. The problem is that China very rarely has trade surplus with other countries. They often come up with illegitimate reasons to restrict trade to those countries with surplus. Australia joining free trade agreement with China makes sense because they've sold so much of their natural resources to Chinese companies. Exporting Iron/Coal for example is huge. The free trade agreement with china will give them a surplus that will make Australians quite wealthy. Climate change will be used to restrict or even eliminate coal use within Australia in order to abuse that situation more. Australia stands to benefit greatly at the expense of China. Japan on the otherhand? They are still in the midst of a deflationary spiral due to their debt crisis and their trade deficit with China will become worse. The Japanese people are pretending to be wealthy right now and are going to be far less wealthy soon.