----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- from: Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net via lbo-talk.org to: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org date: Sat, Oct 15, 2011 at 15:15 subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Infrastructure
Here’s something that should revise a lot of clichés, though it probably won’t: less than 3% of U.S. consumption expenditures are on goods made in China. Almost 90% are made in the USA. Of course, the domestic total is boosted by servicesbut even durable goods are 12% China, 67% U.S. (...)
This info comes from a new <http://www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2011/el2011-25.html?utm_source=home>paper by Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn of the San Francisco Fed. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now I read today´s Reuters story
Insight: Ten years on, American business rethinks China dreams http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/09/us-usa-trade-wto-idUSTRE7B80EB20111209
quote:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The removal of trade barriers heralded unprecedented economic growth for China, vaulting it in a decade to the second largest economy in the world and helping slash its rural poverty rate from 10.2 percent in 2000 to 2.8 percent in 2010.
"The Chinese consider WTO entry the most historic achievement in U.S.-China relations since (U.S. President Richard) Nixon's visit to China," in 1972, Barshefsky said.
It is a different story in the United States where, 10 years on, China's entry into the club of world trading nations is having equally huge ramifications.
The flood of cheap manufactured goods gives an extra $600 a year for the average American family to spend on clothing, shoes, household goods and electronics. But Made in China has hastened the decline of U.S. manufacturing. Factory jobs have shrunk in number by 25 percent the past decade to 11.5 million today, and average factory wages adjusted for inflation have virtually stagnated.
Chinese imports meanwhile have ballooned the U.S.-Sino trade deficit to $273 billion, four times that with any other country. It has stirred anti-China sentiment, a labor union backlash and legislation in Congress to try and force China to let its currency strengthen more rapidly to lower its export advantage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So it seems it´s a bit less innocuous than the "less than 3% of U.S. consumption expenditures are on goods made in China" would indicate, right?
FC -- "The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers." Richard Hamming - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamming_code