All the news you need for everything made or produced in the U.S.A.
March 11, 2016 Leave a comment
In 2010, JBlu Inc., a longtime Los Angeles clothing company, imported some 500,000 pairs of blue jeans from China in 11 shipments through the Port of Long Beach—all headed for retail stores around the country. Read more of this post
March 4, 2016 Leave a comment
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit rose in January as American exports fell for a fourth straight month, the Commerce Department said Friday. Read more of this post
March 2, 2016 Leave a comment
Producers in China and six other countries sold cold-rolled steel at unfairly low prices in the U.S. market and will be taxed as much as 266% on the price, the Commerce Department said in a preliminary decision on March 1. Read more of this post
January 25, 2012 1 Comment
A Gap Inc. store in Shanghai, China.
The first time I visited China, in 2005, an American businessman living there told me that the country was so huge and was changing so fast that everything you heard about it was true, and so was the opposite. That still seems to be the case. China is the fastest-growing consumer market in the world, and American companies have made billions there. At the same time, Chinese consumers aren’t spending nearly as much as American companies had hoped. China has simultaneously become the greatest boon and the biggest disappointment.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2000, the United States forged its current economic relationship with China by permanently granting it most-favored-nation trade status and, eventually, helping the country enter the World Trade Organization. The unspoken deal, though, went something like this: China could make a lot of cheap goods, which would benefit U.S. consumers, even if it cost the country countless low-end manufacturing jobs. And rather than, say, fight for an extra bit of market share in Chicago, American multinationals could offset any losses because of competition by entering a country with more than a billion people — including the fastest-growing middle class in history — just about to buy their first refrigerators, TVs and cars. It was as if the United States added a magical 51st state, one that was bigger and grew faster than all the others. We would all be better off.
More than a decade later, many are waiting for the payoff. Certainly, lots of American companies have made money, but many actual workers have paid a real price. What went wrong? In part, American businesses assumed that a wealthier China would look like, well, America, says Paul French, a longtime Shanghai-based analyst with Access Asia-Mintel. He notes that Chinese consumers have spent far less than expected, and the money they do spend is less likely to be spent on American goods. Read more of this post
February 11, 2011 Leave a comment
Annual Summary for 2010
Goods and Services
For 2010, exports of $1,831.8 billion and imports of $2,329.7 billion resulted in a goods and services deficit of $497.8 billion.
Our 2010 trade deficit for goods and services is $500 billion.
Our 2010 trade deficit is $122.9 billion more than the 2009 deficit of $374.9 billion.
Our deficit is growing rapidly. Our 2010 deficit was 33% bigger than the year before.
For goods, exports were $1,289.1 billion and imports were $1,935.6 billion, resulting in a goods deficit of $646.5 billion, $139.6 billion more
than the 2009 deficit of $506.9 billion.
The trade deficit is even bigger when looking at goods alone. Our goods trade defict is $650 billion. That is 28% bigger
than the year before.
For services, exports were $542.8 billion and imports were $394.1 billion, resulting in a services surplus of $148.7 billion, $16.7 billion more
than the 2009 surplus of $132.0 billion.
The goods and services deficit was $497.8 billion in 2010, up from $374.9 billion in 2009. As a percentage of U.S. gross domestic product, the goods and services deficit was 3.4 percent in 2010, up from 2.7 percent in 2009.
The average adult consumes $700 per month in imported goods. If we could reduce that to $517 per person per month, we would have no trade deficit at all.
I like to add (though it is difficult to quantify, but very likely to
be true): With no trade deficit, we would likely have 3-4%
unemployment (a historical rate of unemployment)
Final Point: All we need to do is reduce our consumption of imported goods 25% to have jobs again in this country.
http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/international/trade/tradnewsrelease.htm
