2022 U.S.-China Trade Data Shows No Signs of Widespread Decoupling

Clark Packard and Alfredo Carrillo ObregonEarlier this week, the Census Bureau released its official 2022 trade data. As our Cato colleague Scott Lincicomenoted, the overall data continues to undercut the popular narrative pushed by politicians and pundits about the demise of globalization. On a  more granular level, the data are revealing for U.S.-China trade watchers.First, for all of the talk about “strategic decoupling,” trade ties remain strong between the United States and China. Over the last five years, policymakers in Washington and Beijing have erected large trade barriers between the two countries: tariffs and reprisals have gone back and forth; heavy‐​handed industrial policie s in the United States and China aimed at boosting domestic production of “strategic” goods ostensibly to lessen reliance on the other; new export controls imposed by Washington on semiconductors and related products. Likewise, Beijing’s strict COVID‐​Zero policies shuttered large swaths o f the Chinese economy in 2022. Despite these moves, data on two‐​way goods trade between the United States and China reached $643.8 billion in 2022, in real terms.1 While this number is slightly lower than the total real value of U.S.-China trade in 2021, it is a  far cry from what one would expect were a broad “decoupling” between the two economies be occurring.Indeed, that two ‐​way trade continues at such high volumes is a reminder that trade takes place between people ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs