On January 25th, The WinePress shared a report from The Trends Journal documenting that China’s export values with the United States reached record highs. Now more numbers have been tallied, and the U.S. has clearly lost the trade war, as America now faces its largest trade deficit since 2008.
The following report is from the Trends Journal:
Go back to 2017. From the day Donald Trump took office until the COVID War began last February, a week did not go by where the “experts” used the ruse that the equity markets were moving up or down on the U.S. vs. China Trade War battle.
The U.S. Lost the Trade War
The annual U.S. trade deficit was $481 billion in 2016 when Donald Trump became president and rose by almost a third to $678.7 billion at the end of December 2020, according to a 5 February report from the U.S. Commerce Department.
It was the largest trade deficit since 2008, Reuters noted.
The deficit grew 17.7 percent in 2020 alone, rising from $577 billion at the end of 2019. The global economic shutdown slashed demand for U.S. goods as well as U.S. production, while China’s economy hummed, supplying more goods than ever to the U.S. and the world.
The Trump administration never had a feasible plan for reducing the trade deficit. The 2017 tax cut ensured that the U.S… would continue to spend more than it produced, hence the… deficit.
Tariffs reduced imports from China, but these were mostly replaced with imports from other sources.
Mary Lovely. Senior fellow for the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The U.S. trade deficit with China specifically fell from $419 billion in 2016 to $311 billion at the end of 2020, due in large measure to tariffs Trump laid on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods, according to Politico.
However, during Trump’s term, the U.S. trade deficit rose with France, Germany, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Also, imports from China spiked during 2020’s last six months as the U.S. economic shutdown sent merchants and manufacturers looking elsewhere for supplies.
Under Trump’s “Phase One” China trade deal, China bought vast amounts of U.S. corn during the last six months of 2020 but far less than the $76.7 billion in total goods and services China had agreed to buy in 2020. The deal’s 2021 benchmark is $123.3 billion.
The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol collected $74.4 billion in tariffs on imports during the U.S. government’s fiscal year 2020. Despite Trump’s claim that foreign governments paid tariffs, in reality, the tariffs were added to the cost of the items imported, raising prices for consumers.
Goods exported from the U.S. to China in calendar 2020 totaled $110 billion, compared to about $130 billion in 2017, census bureau figures show. Services exported to China carried a value of $28 billion through 2020’s first three quarters; the total services exported to China in 2017 were valued at $55 billion.
Gerald Celente, publisher of the Trend’s Journal gives their forecast and additional comments:
TREND FORECAST: We maintain our forecast that the 21st century will be the Chinese century since the business of China is business and the business of America has been war.
And as we have long forecast, manufacturers were leaving China for cheaper slave-labor manufacturing sources before Donald Trump’s presidency.
As for the business of America being war, we have also noted the hypocrisy of the political mindset that taught Americans to fight and die against the Chinese in the Korean war and launch the Vietnam war to stop the spread of communism… but when it comes to doing business with them, “commies” don’t count.
Indeed, the same communist party that defeated America in the Vietnam war is still in charge. But now it’s a fine place to do business… a place where manufacturers can get products made cheaply and mark up the selling prices to make greater profit margins.
The same propaganda was sold to the Americans to hate those Chinese commies who hid behind the bamboo curtain… until it was time to do business.
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: As the Founder of Occupy Peace and Freedom, we note this to not only express my disdain for wars based on lies that are launched by psychopaths but to illustrate how the bottom line – not morality, democracy, truth, or justice – has become the true meaning of America’s political system.
Like I have said many times, “Do you think the United States would have invaded Iraq if their major export was broccoli?”
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
As I said in our report about the rise in Chinese exports, I do not have a sufficient answer as to how the problem would be fixed. Frankly, at this point, I do not think it can be fixed. The only real way to turn the tables is for this nation to actually start producing and manufacturing some things. At the end of 2019, nearly 70% of the U.S. economy was all consumer based. That means America is not making and manufacturing nearly enough. So when the governments enforced the lockdowns in March of 2020, and deemed millions “non-essential,” it absolutely has killed off the economy and smashed any potential for growth, as we have been reporting. Whenever the media boasts about job growth, all the jobs are in the public sector, or some low-paying job in the private sector. Manufacturing and industrial jobs hardly ever see growth.
I’m just “spit-ball’n” here: I have no idea if this would even work; but seeing as America can print money like nothing, perhaps take these trillions of dollars and actually invest in these factories to build up an infrastructure and less reliant on other nations, especially China. Again, I have no idea if that would even work or makes sense logically: but I’d almost rather do that instead of handing out stimulus checks that will get burned up immediately on dumb stuff. But building America up is the last thing our politicians will do. As long as they can rob the taxpayer and live in multiple beach huts, they could careless what happens to America.
Regardless, debt is a very bad thing and I am very much opposed of getting into debt.
[26] Be not thou one of them that strike hands, or of them that are sureties for debts. [27] If thou hast nothing to pay, why should he take away thy bed from under thee?Proverbs 22:26-27
This data further validates what I have been noting in some of our reports: “look here, look here – not there!” Trump repeatedly shouted about China this, and China that, (which The WinePress certainly are not defenders for China); but that was meant to divert attention away from the fact that the money with China was redirected and ballooned with other nations. America loses again.
As I commented on our report about China’s exports, China is one of the prophesied powers to rise in the end times, as the Bible speaks of “the kings of the east” in the book of Revelation 16:12, along with their allies with the likes of Russia, North Korea, Afghanistan, and others; some of which are mentioned in Ezekiel 38-39 with what is known as “the Gog-Magog war.”
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