The Heat: U.S.-China Trade

Despite escalating diplomatic and political tensions between the United States and China, both sides remain committed to a trade deal.

To discuss, tonight’s panel includes Einar Tangen, political and economic affairs commentator; Jeff Moon, president of China Moon Strategies, a consulting firm; Wang Cong, a reporter for the Global Times and Anna Ashton, senior Dir. of Government Affairs, U.S.-China Business Council.

[kckoay]

Conspicuously, there is a disconnect between politics and good sense in Washington.

Washington has been weaponising the alleged trade imbalance, and the hyperbole of “national security threat” to wage trade war against China, and to transgress on the rights of the Chinese companies — Huawei, ZTE, TikTok and Tencent etc.

The truth is, the U.S. has not been forthcoming as regards to the fact that the American companies are having a field day in China.

Starbucks, which has long dominated the Chinese coffee market, currently has over 4, 000 stores spread across 160 cities in the country. To top that, the company has announced plans to build 600 new stores annually over the next five years in China to double the number of its existing stores to 6, 000 by 2022 across 230 cities.

McDonald's in Beijing opened in 1992, and today it has 2, 700 restaurants, with an ambitious plan to increase that to 4, 500 by 2022. There are over 5, 900 KFC outlets in more than 1, 000 Chinese cities. Pizza Huts, on the other hand, operates 2, 000 outlets. In fact, Yum!Brand, which owns both KFC and Pizza Huts, is so bullish about China’s market that they’re planing to rollout 2 restaurants on a daily basis!

At its sales peak in 2017, General Motor sold over 4 million vehicles in China. That is 42% of its total sales worldwide, and 1 million units more than what it had sold in the US in the same period!

Nike’s sales in China increased by 21% to $5.1 billion in 2018, or 15% of its global sales of $34.5 billion. Whereas its sales in the US had decreased by 2%.

China made up 13.8% of Boeing’s (which competes directly with Airbus) $100 billion revenues in 2018.

Intel’s sales to China in the meantime, grew by 27% year-on-year to $18.8 billion in 2018, or 27% of its sales worldwide. In the case of Qualcomm, their dependent on China’s market is even more profound; with $15.1 billion or 67% of its 2018 sales revenue coming from China.

Besides, the U.S. also ran up a trade surplus with Hong Kong of $31.0 billion in 2018.

The U.S. has also downplayed the fact that as of May 2020, China owns $1.08 trillion, or about 4%, of the $25.8 trillion U.S. national debt. And that to maintain the ‘fiat’ value of the dollar, the confidence and continuous support of the world largest trading nation, China, is pre-eminent.

It is a fact that the United States has been exploiting the rest of the world with the power of the dollar and by its indiscriminate borrowings. This is largely made possible because the dollar is still the dominant reserve currency of central banks around the world. A massive advantage which the U.S. should be grateful and consider as a privilege instead of an entitlement.

With that privilege, the United States can technically continue to print unlimited amount of money, via the issuance of debts, to finance its insatiable appetite for consumption; and to augment the exploit and hegemony of capital.

Therefore, it is not the case where China is exploiting the U.S., but the other way around — where China produce, the U.S. consume.

Effectively, the cost of capital and labour required of China for the production of goods and services, to the the U.S. is no more than the cost of printing of its treasury bills — which is near nothing.

The logical strategy would be for the U.S. to view and treat China as its strategic partner, rather than an adversary.

[louisewaltu]

China knew that us app all have back door damn

[appanahsanasy]

Well explained by all 4 persons, its very informative for business populations. TQ

[LaBambaCL]

u.s. companies do far business in china than vice versa.
huawei, tiktok, wechat comply with the local law and more.
facebook, google chose not to comply with the local law.
china is a developing country, similar to mexico, per capita income is less than 1/4 of the u.s.

[maloko]

Trump 2020! Make China cry more again!