General

What's wrong with Sino US trade? Politics is politics, and business is still done. Recently, a large number of empty containers have piled up at the ports of China and the United States, and many people say that the Chinese and American industries have decoupled! Actually, this cannot withstand scrutiny. Let's first come to the conclusion: in fact, the goods of the mature economies in the United States and the West are no longer available for sale, and it is not caused by any decoupling. With the digestion of future inventory of goods, the economic recession will gradually recover, inflation will be suppressed, and trade volume will still gradually recover.

Firstly, over the past two years, the export volume has sharply increased. When goods are produced and there are no packaging boxes, more empty containers should be manufactured. Once the export frenzy period has passed, containers will naturally become vacant.

Secondly, in the past two years, due to the pandemic, the relief funds issued by the US government have been spent by the people, and now they have returned to normal. The people also have no money to spend. At the same time, high inflation and continuous interest rate hikes have also suppressed consumption.

Finally, in the past two years, due to concerns about the epidemic and supply chain blockages, there were too many purchases that had not yet been fully digested. Now that the epidemic is over, people are gradually importing according to quantity, reducing inventory, which has led to a significant decrease in the import volume of mature Western economies. It's like the items from the last Double 11 have not been used up yet, so we definitely can't continue hoarding. But there is one aspect that we must sound the alarm: to prevent the tendency of American imports to shift to North America. This is based on US data: the trade volume between China and the United States in 2022 was 690.6 billion US dollars, although the amount set a historical record, it only accounts for 11.03% of China's total trade volume and 10.3% of the total import and export trade volume of the United States. In 2018, the trade volume between China and the United States accounted for 13.71% and 14.84% of the trade volume of China and the United States, respectively. In contrast, in the past four years, the proportion of trade between China and the United States has decreased by 2.68% and 4.54%, respectively. This is an indisputable fact. On the other hand, last year China's exports to the United States surpassed those of ASEAN and the European Union, ranking first, while the previous two years were still third, indicating that mature economies have already experienced a recession, and world trade is shrinking. Compared to ASEAN and the European Union, China US trade is shrinking relatively slowly. Our domestic enterprises have maintained a bit of patience, which is not an irreversible trend.