Park comments on why China’s trade surplus with the US continued to grow in 2018 despite the trade war
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Despite the ongoing trade wars, China's trade surplus with the US increased by 17% but its trade surplus to the entire world fell. IEMS Director, Albert Park, was featured in the BBC Chinese article exploring the reasons behind.
He suggested that this is mainly due to almost no increase in imports from the US, compared to robust increase in imports from the entire world of over 15%. China's small overall trade surplus provides evidence that China is not systematically engaging in unfair trade practices to help its exporters. The increase in China's trade surplus to the US could reflect trends that predate the US-China trade crisis, since the crisis intensified in the second half of last year and it takes time for exporters and importers to adjust new orders. Robust demand for Chinese imports might also reflect the fact that it is difficult for other countries to compete with the quality and price of Chinese goods, so that modest tariffs do not substantially alter the demand for Chinese imports.
Read the full article on BBC published on 15 January 2019.
