Recently, according to ABC reports, the U.S. Department of Commerce released a set of data showing that in 2023, Mexico will become the largest country in U.S. imports, surpassing China for the first time in 20 years. In 2022-2023, the value of U.S. imports from Mexico increased by nearly 5% to more than $475 billion. However, the value of U.S. imports from China fell by 20 percent to $427 billion. And this is part of the U.S. effort to seek decoupling from China's chain, with Biden seeking more alternatives to the chain, or relocating manufacturing back to the U.S. mainland.
Even before Trump's tenure, the United States waged a war and raised tariffs on nearly $300 billion of Chinese goods by about 25 percent. Trying to decouple from China through this means, reduce the deficit, and build barriers to protect domestic companies in the United States. Even so, the amount of China and the United States continued to rise in those years, and the United States further widened its deficit with China. In recent years, Biden has also continued to continue Trump's China policy, judging from the recent set of data released by the United States, the United States' "decoupling and breaking the chain" seems to be quite effective.
But the reality is clearly more complicated, with Bloomberg noting not so long ago that Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia, Poland and Morocco have benefited from a realignment of the ** chain due to tensions between China and the United States. The Sino-US war has benefited these countries. They are all middlemen, and the so-called "decoupling to reduce dependence on China" is just a matter of European and American politicians deceiving their own domestic people. Prior to this, Wall Street also admitted that it was not easy for American companies to find that it was not easy to decouple from "Made in China", because most of the products imported by the United States from Southeast Asia and Mexico were produced by Chinese companies, and without Chinese participation, these companies could not produce at all. Therefore, some Sino-US ** chains are far from being decoupled, but have added some complex and more costly links. The United States also knows that most of the products imported from Mexico are created by China, but in order to suppress inflation, it pretends not to know, and China also knows that the United States knows, but the two sides maintain a tacit understanding.
This time, ABC also said that some Chinese manufacturers have built factories in Mexico, using Mexico as a "transit point" for exports to the United States, and benefiting from the freedom** agreement signed by the United States, Mexico and Canada. Therefore, most of the value of goods in the United States, Mexico, Vietnam and other countries is created by China, but the statistics of the United States will not include this in the "Sino-US ** amount", and the Sino-US ** amount has decreased, but it is not so serious. Moreover, it was originally a direct transaction between China and the United States, but now because of the first-class barriers in the United States, there are more middlemen who directly make the difference, and these excess costs and price differences are ultimately paid by American companies and consumers.
However, this has also reduced employment in China, which still has drawbacks. However, the partial decoupling of China and the United States is a foregone conclusion, and the loss of part of the US market should not make the sky fall. Decoupling is a two-way street, the United States does not want to rely on China, why does China want to rely on the United States, and the most important thing to get rid of now is its dependence on the dollar. When dealing with countries like Mexico, which are deeply tied to the U.S. economy, China needs to be considerate of the risks it faces.