General

According to the Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, in 2022, the export volume of the United States will increase by $453.1 billion, and the import volume will increase by $556.1 billion. Compared with the two, the trade deficit will be $103 billion, an increase of 12.2%. Affected by the increase in the annual import and export volume, by 2022, the total export volume of the United States will be $3.01 trillion, and the total import volume will be $3.96 trillion. Finally, the total trade deficit of the United States will reach $948.1 billion, reaching the highest level in history.

From the perspective of the factors driving up the annual deficit, inflation, especially the high price of crude oil, has played a direct role in the further expansion of the US deficit. According to the observation report of Huacheng Import and Export Data, inflation in the United States rose to a 40-year high in 2022. Although the price of crude oil in the international market declined slightly, it remained high at around $80/barrel. In the same year, the export of crude oil (including fuel oil) from the United States only increased by 7.5 billion dollars, while the import of crude oil and other petroleum products increased by 77.7 billion dollars. On the other hand, the global supply chain damaged by the COVID-19 and geopolitics will be repaired and rebuilt in 2022, but the development expectation is still not very clear. In order to prevent the risk of supply chain rupture from reappearing, American retailers will quickly replenish inventory, thus boosting imports. Moreover, the US dollar rose by 8.2% in 2022, showing a significant increase in purchasing power. At the same time, global inflation raised future consumption expectations, and domestic consumers in the United States took advantage of the rise of the US dollar to expand consumption and purchase in advance. At the same time, the rise of the US dollar also increased the price of American export products. Its competitiveness in the international market has weakened periodically. Compared with the two sides, it is inevitable that imports exceed exports.

It is worth considering that the US import and export deficit is definitely not a temporary or short-term trade ecosystem. It has lasted for 51 years since its inception. During this period, except for 1973 and 1975, trade deficits have occurred in other years, and the scale of the deficit has gradually expanded. The only difference is that the phased causes of the deficit vary widely, and the effect of the deficit in the previous year may disappear in the next year, It has even turned into the driving force of US trade exports. Therefore, observing the root cause of the US trade deficit from the annual time window can only get different fragmented answers. In order to obtain a more substantive and complete causal solution, we must go deep into the background of international division of labor, the global monetization scenario and the specific economic movement scenario to carefully verify.

First of all, foreign trade of any country is carried out in the international division of labor network, and the trade deficit of the United States is an important mirror image of the imbalance of its domestic industries in the global allocation. Since the 1980s, the deepening international division of labor has not only brought about the spatial and geographical displacement of industrial resources, such as the transfer of a large number of manufacturing industries from the most developed countries to emerging developing countries, but also caused deep fission and re-grafting between products, such as the production chain of many products constitutes the developed countries engaged in technological innovation and product design, while developing countries undertake production and manufacturing, In the restructuring of the division of labor matrix, as the most developed economy in the world at that time, the industrial structure of the United States received the most profound baptism. Not only did some labor-intensive manufacturing industries, such as textile, clothing and footwear, transfer to other countries, but also some capital-and technology-intensive manufacturing industries, such as steel, automobile and electronic products, also gradually transferred to overseas, This has led to the contraction and fault of American manufacturing industry. In the case of insufficient self-supply, the United States has embarked on the path of dependence on imports of goods, and trade data is also increasingly moving towards the direction of increasing export deficit. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

In order to prevent the more serious imbalance between domestic supply and demand caused by the "hollowing out of manufacturing industry", in recent years, the United States government has increased the policy guidance of overseas manufacturing industry to regroup at home. However, the relatively high labor price in the United States and the high supply cost of land factors have objectively restrained the incremental effect of the return of manufacturing industry, and the total market supply has not changed much. At the same time, as an important direction of international industrial flows, more enterprises have to seek to invest in relatively safe or less risky countries and regions, and achieve deep integration through localization and greenbelt, in order to effectively avoid the increasingly serious impact of trade protectionism. In this way, the final exports to the United States from key countries that are restricted or blocked by the United States have not been greatly affected. Take China as an example. Last year, foreign non-financial direct investment increased by 7.2%, of which the investment in the manufacturing sector increased by 22.4%, accounting for nearly 20%. These manufacturing enterprises do not appear to be local to China. In fact, the resulting export growth will also be recorded in China's trade account. This is why China, as the source country of the largest trade deficit of the United States, has not changed for many years. It is not difficult to find that the persistent and increasing trade deficit of the United States is actually the direct result of the continuous division of labor and reshuffle of global industries.

Secondly, the foreign trade of any country takes place in a specific domestic economic model. The trade deficit of the United States reflects the double imbalance between its domestic savings and consumption, savings and investment. As far as the United States is concerned, "high consumption and low savings" is its typical economic structure feature. According to the Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, after reaching the peak of 24.9% in 1965, the savings rate of the United States has entered a declining channel in the following decades. At present, the savings rate of 3.3% is the lowest among the major economies in the world. At the same time, the high per capita income level of the United States is comparable to that of few countries. The United States government has also been encouraging low savings and borrowing consumption. The consumption rate of the United States, which is more than 80% and the first in the major western countries, has not changed. The imbalance between low savings and high consumption needs to be made up by foreign trade, that is, as long as consumption exceeds savings, it will inevitably form a sustained and strong pull on imports, and the trade deficit generated by the savings deficit will also be manifested and solidified.

From the perspective of economics, savings can be transformed into consumption and investment, and there is a "crowding out effect" between consumption and investment in the result of savings transformation, that is, on the premise that consumption occupies more savings resources, there will inevitably be an imbalance between savings and investment. Therefore, the investment source as an important vehicle for the economic development is seriously placed before the United States government, This has also led to an important logical topic - debt financing. Under the condition that the domestic borrowing can meet the investment demand is very limited, the US government has embarked on the road of no return to raise funds from overseas countries, and the fiscal deficit is also snowballing. Just as the savings deficit leads to the trade deficit, the fiscal deficit can also provide blood and oxygen for the trade deficit. The savings deficit and the fiscal deficit together form the right arm of the trade deficit.

Third, the foreign trade of any country is based on currency exchange. The US trade deficit reflects the embodiment of the absolute imbalance between the US dollar and non-US currencies. Throughout the world, the United States dollar is not only the most important tool for international trade settlement and exchange rate transactions, but also the most core currency for global investment and financing, and also an important reserve asset of each country, and the United States dollar can flow freely around the world. In comparison, any non-United States currency, whether it is widely recognized, or the accessibility of transaction payment as a medium, as well as its credibility as a reserve asset, is much weaker, And many of them also need US dollars for endorsement. It is precisely on the strength of the local currency that the United States can issue bonds arbitrarily. Although the trade deficit has led to the outflow of US dollars, which formally represents the loss of the face value of US wealth, at the same time, allowing product exporters to hold more US dollars is equivalent to enhancing their ability to purchase US bonds, thereby supporting the smooth issuance of treasury bond by the United States and allowing the US dollars to flow back to China. During this period, the United States paid only negligible US dollar printing fees, and gained more cheap goods from exporting countries, At the same time, the return of the US dollar also makes the US trade deficit sustainable and non-risky, and makes the US trade deficit have the tendency of systematic growth.

From a dynamic perspective, the history of the US trade deficit is actually a reflection of the history of US dollar hegemony, or the US dollar hegemony is the institutional basis of the US trade deficit. With the collapse of the Bretton Woods system as the dividing line, the United States has been showing a trade surplus for over a hundred years, but since 1971, the United States had its first trade deficit of 152 million dollars, it has continued to increase and remain unchanged. As a legacy of a period of financial history, the United States dollar is linked to gold under the Bretton Woods system, which makes the issuance of dollars by the United States not less constrained. However, after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the United States dollar leaves gold and enters a free state, which means that the United States can freely issue dollars and create credit according to its own needs. Moreover, after the collapse of the Bretton Woods system, the international monetary status of the United States dollar is not only not weakened, but also tied with oil, The formation of "petrodollar" and its influence on commodity prices began. In the end, the hegemony of the "single currency" of the dollar not only made the United States' foreign borrowing become unbridled, but also continued and effectively supported the United States to successfully recover the "loss" caused by the trade deficit, which also led to the interesting phenomenon that the expansion of the US trade deficit and the expansion of the US dollar hegemony were synchronized in time. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.