Go back to 2017. From the day Donald Trump took office until the COVID War began last February, a week did not go by where the “experts” used the ruse that the equity markets were moving up or down on the U.S. vs. China Trade War battle.
The U.S. Lost the Trade War
The annual U.S. trade deficit was $481 billion in 2016 when Donald Trump became president and rose by almost a third to $678.7 billion at the end of December 2020, according to a 5 February report from the U.S. Commerce Department.
It was the largest trade deficit since 2008, Reuters noted.
The deficit grew 17.7 percent in 2020 alone, rising from $577 billion at the end of 2019. The global economic shutdown slashed demand for U.S. goods as well as U.S. production, while China’s economy hummed, supplying more goods than ever to the U.S. and the world.
“The Trump administration never had a feasible plan for reducing the trade deficit,” Mary Lovely, senior fellow the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told Politico. “The 2017 tax cut ensured that the U.S… would continue to spend more than it produced, hence the… deficit.”
“Tariffs reduced imports from China, but these were mostly replaced with imports from other sources,” she noted.
The U.S. trade deficit with China specifically fell from $419 billion in 2016 to $311 billion at the end of 2020, due in large measure to tariffs Trump laid on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods, according to Politico.
However, during Trump’s term, the U.S. trade deficit rose with France, Germany, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Also, imports from China spiked during 2020’s last six months as the U.S. economic shutdown sent merchants and manufacturers looking elsewhere for supplies.
Under Trump’s “Phase One” China trade deal, China bought vast amounts of U.S. corn during the last six months of 2020 but far less than the $76.7 billion in total goods and services China had agreed to buy in 2020. The deal’s 2021 benchmark is $123.3 billion.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol collected $74.4 billion in tariffs on imports during the U.S. government’s fiscal year 2020. Despite Trump’s claim that foreign governments paid tariffs, in reality, the tariffs were added to the cost of the items imported, raising prices for consumers.
Goods exported from the U.S. to China in calendar 2020 totaled $110 billion, compared to about $130 billion in 2017, census bureau figures show. Services exported to China carried a value of $28 billion through 2020’s first three quarters; the total services exported to China in 2017 were valued at $55 billion.
TREND FORECAST: We maintain our forecast that the 21st century will be the Chinese century since the business of China is business and the business of America has been war.
And as we have long forecast, manufacturers were leaving China for cheaper slave-labor manufacturing sources before Donald Trump’s presidency.
As for the business of America being war, we have also noted the hypocrisy of the political mindset that taught Americans to fight and die against the Chinese in the Korean war and launch the Vietnam war to stop the spread of communism… but when it comes to doing business with them, “commies” don’t count.
Indeed, the same communist party that defeated America in the Vietnam war is still in charge. But now it’s a fine place to do business… a place where manufacturers can get products made cheaply and mark up the selling prices to make greater profit margins.
The same propaganda was sold to the Americans to hate those Chinese commies who hid behind the bamboo curtain… until it was time to do business.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: As the Founder of Occupy Peace and Freedom, we note this to not only express my disdain for wars based on lies that are launched by psychopaths but to illustrate how the bottom line – not morality, democracy, truth, or justice – has become the true meaning of America’s political system.
Like I have said many times, “Do you think the United States would have invaded Iraq if their major export was broccoli?
