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According to the latest data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce recently,China is no longer the largest importer of goods to the United States, falling from first place to third behind Mexico and Canada. What is the reason for the drastic change in this ranking? And by what will Mexico replace China as the largest importer of goods to the United States?
China took a back seat
Just earlier, the U.S. Department of Commerce released the latest news showing that U.S. imports from China plummeted by a full 20 percent throughout last year, taking it to a staggering $427 billion.
For the whole of last year, the amount of China and the United States fell by 116%。
In recent years, the United States has been shouting for localization and independence, especially at the industrial level, reducing dependence on China, and calling for "decoupling" from China, which has caused panic.
However, through statistical analysis, the truth is not as simple as he claims. China is still the only country in the world with all industrial categories, with a complete and complete industrial chain, and has a great say in all fields.
This sudden news is inevitably surprising. But in fact, when you think about it, it is still reasonable.
After all, since the United States launched the war in 2018, the amount between China and the United States has been declining rapidly year by year.
And it took six years.
I have to say that the size of the first volume between China and the United States was huge, and it took six years for the United States to decouple from China so firmly.
Does this mean that the United States has achieved a phased success in decoupling from China?
I think this is multifaceted, and I believe that friends who have been following Sino-US relations should know it.
In the past two years, the statistics of the United States have become more and more perfunctory, and of course, the whole world is not blind.
In fact, everyone can see how much water the Americans irrigate, but due to the helplessness of the United States' strength and dollar hegemony, everyone can only see through it without saying anything, and praise the Americans for their "emperor's new clothes" with no conscience.
This year is another critical year for the United States, and for the Democratic Party that wants to remain in power, it is urgent to hand over a successful China strategy to American voters.
But at the same time, China's total foreign trade exceeded the $6 trillion mark for the first time, and the United States is also in the position of China's third largest foreign trade partner, the top two being ASEAN and the European Union.
But if you look at it as a single country, the United States still ranks first.
As I've said before, the data released by the U.S. Department of Commerce is watery. The reason why China has fallen to the third place as an importer of the United States is due to many reasons.
The first is the post-epidemic eradication, a general consumption downgrade around the world, and the United States is no exception. (To be honest, it may be more serious, I didn't hear much about it 18 years ago, there were mass riots in the United States and then led to "zero dollar purchases").
And in the past two years, it has become more and more frequent, so much so that it has now become a kind of Internet meme. The shrinking consumer market in the United States is the reason for this change in the ranking.
Second, the United States has increased excess tariffs on China's mobile phones, automobiles, drones and other high-value-added high-tech products. The low-end manufacturing industry with lower tariff restrictions has gradually shifted to countries and regions with more human resource advantages along with the ** of Chinese's labor cost.
To sum it up,The shrinkage of the U.S. consumer market has led to a decline in the purchasing power of mid-to-high-end products, and the U.S. tariff barriers to China have led to the loss of the best advantage for China's related products in the United States.
At the same time, due to the downgrade of consumption, the purchasing power of the low-end market has increased instead of decreasing.
Why Mexico?
The cost of decoupling from China is very painful, and the rapid cost of living for ordinary Americans due to the increase in tariff barriers by the United States has greatly shaken the stability within American society.
To this end, the United States urgently needs to cultivate the next so-called "China". In recent years, the United States has been frantically hyping that some emerging developing countries are about to overtake China, such as India, Vietnam and even Indonesia.
They have all been pinned on by the United States, and they belong to the prince who was once hand-picked.
But I personally think that only India is the most promising in terms of volume, but the business environment of the third brother is not flattering.
Other countries, such as Vietnam, are too closely tied to China. The Americans were always at ease, so they turned around and Mexico was reliable, so they gave Mexico a chance to catch up.
As a result, two years after the launch of the ** war with China, the "North American Liberty Agreement", which had been interrupted, was renamed the "American-Mexico-Canada Liberty Agreement", which officially entered into force in 2020.
So we see that today the top two largest importers of the United States, Canada, needless to say, exports to the United States mainly energy.
As for Mexico, in 2023, in terms of total imports to the United States, the total number of imports from Mexico by the United States reached $475 billion.
The data alone may seem like Mexico has really replaced China for the United States, but is that really the case?
We might as well recall what it was like when the Americans last hyped up Vietnam's catch-up with China. In order to circumvent the high tariffs of the United States on China, some companies use Vietnam as a transit station, exporting parts to Vietnam, assembling them in Vietnam and then selling them to the United States.
Or more directly, directly export to Vietnam first, and then export, to the United States.
And just after the USMCA came into effect, some goods can enter the U.S. market with zero tariffs. Naturally, many multinationals have chosen to relocate to Mexico, which has become a new transit point, importing parts from China, assembling them in Mexico and shipping them to the United States.
In fact, China is Mexico's largest surplus country, and in 2023, China and Mexico will have a breakthrough development, with a total of $100.2 billion exceeding the $100 billion mark.
Of that amount, we exported about $81.5 billion in goods to Mexico and imported $18.7 billion from them. We have a surplus of $62.8 billion.
In fact, of course, the U.S. is actively importing goods from Southeast Asia outside of Mexico, which also needs to import parts from China.
And the goods exported to the United States from these two regions are quite similar to those imported from them.
China has already had a way to deal with it
In the post-epidemic era, the global economic downturn, including the recent domestic investment market, has led to another resurgence of the recent voice of China.
According to the latest released data, China and the United States have achieved growth throughout 2023, but China's economic advantage has been extended due to worsening inflation in the United States, which has led to slower than expected growth.
Although the proportion of nominal GDP between China and the United States has declined slightly, China's real GDP growth rate is still faster than that of the United States.
Let's take a look at the nominal GDP of the two countries. The data shows that since the end of last year, the nominal GDP of China and the United States has been compared from 69 before3 down to the current 654%, which is a major economic hotspot of global concern.
If we sort out the data, we will see that this value has fallen by 42 percentage points, which surprised a lot of people.
Looking at real GDP again, China's real GDP growth rate reached 5 percent last year2, compared to the United States, it is 25%, which is another testament to China's steady economic position in the world.
At the average exchange rate, China's real GDP per year is 1789 trillion dollars, compared to 27 trillion in the United States$36 trillion, although the United States still maintains 2Strong growth momentum of 5%.
However, it is worth noting that in contrast to China's relatively stable economic growth, the economic growth of the United States has been maintained by the "medicine" method of constantly raising interest rates.
The hidden high risk behind this is reduced by the issuance of a large number of US bonds and forced distributions to other countries. Monetize U.S. debt.
Today's economic hidden dangers in the United States are like an Evergrande with infinite size. In the event of a crisis, the whole world will be involved
Therefore, it is important for China to maintain its best relationship with the United States, but it is more important to strengthen its resistance, expand markets in other regions, and minimize the influence of the United States.
The development of countries along the "Belt and Road" is an important joint to enhance China's economic ability to resist risks. This is also a significant improvement this year.
According to data, in 2023, China's imports and exports with the "Belt and Road" countries will reach 1947 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 28%。
Customs clearance of goods is smoother. In 2023, the China-Europe train will run 170,000 trains, 1.9 million TEUs of goods sent, an increase of 6% and 18% year-on-year respectively.
860,000 TEUs of goods were transported by trains of the new western land-sea corridor, an increase of 14%; Customs supervision, inspection and release of China-Laos railway import and export goods 42180,000 tons, an increase of 949%, the China-Laos Railway, a logistics "big channel" between China and Southeast Asia, is becoming increasingly apparent.
Last year, the Belt and Road Initiative as a whole accounted for an astonishing 46 percent of total imports and exports6%！Both the scale and the proportion are the highest since the initiative was launched.
Deepening reform and opening up does not mean deepening the degree of openness to the United States and the West, the world is still very large, and we need to continue to open up to more other parts of the world that have been neglected for a long time.