China announces record $1.2T trade surplus despite Trump tariffs

bbc.com

24 points·voxadam··4 comments

Is there even one secondary source confirming this figure? The number of Western newspapers printing this as fact, without apparently a modicum of research, is kind of concerning. "China announces" is not the most reliable source.

Another source wouldn’t matter, the point is Trump and the US thought China was beholden to them, and surprise surprise, the global economy can sink all of the exports China can ship. The US proved its own irrelevance with this policy footgun.

> Trade with the US did weaken, but this was made up for by a rise in Chinese exports elsewhere, especially to South East Asia, Africa and Latin America.

China is going to help the rest of the world reach developed status affordably through these exports (clean tech and technology primarily) to stave off deflation and keep production and workers utilized, and the US isn’t going to replace this loss with domestic production.

I'm doing my part!

Of course the Trumpist response is going to be the entire news media is failing and lying and doesn't do actual journalism and doesn't have multiple sources. The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) published links to multiple data sources, as well as publishing the data for multiple nations as a percentage of GDP, which provides context such as that Japan is running a bigger trade surplus as a percentage of GDP. https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-stealth-trade-surplus

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