It sounds like China is the place for cheap labor.
And how much is "round-robin" exports of parts to be assembled and merged with foreign components abroad to be reimported?
Thanks for the link!!!
According to Commerce Department numbers, much of what the United States exports to China are machines and machine parts, especially computer components and integrated circuits. Chinese companies assemble the parts into computers, televisions, telephones, toys and other office machines and consumer electronics and ship those back to the United States as well as to third countries.
Thanks for making my point for me. We export high value added goods like integrated circuits and some low skilled low paid Chinese worker clicks the pieces together and turns then into toys and phones. Yeah, we really need to get those jobs back. Never mind the high tech parts we're making here. LOL!
The overall measures published show that U.S. imports are exceeding our exports by $620 billion. The approximately two-to-one gap is often waved away as inconsequential by apologists for the inordinate importation.
Wow, inordinate importation!! You mean we're buying lotsa stuff? Egghead!
Chinese companies assemble the parts into computers, televisions, telephones, toys and other office machines and consumer electronics and ship those back to the United States as well as to third countries.
Jobs that would formerly have been in the U.S. Laugh all you want about the supposedly "snap together" low-tech part of the equation, (do you honestly think that's all their doing?) jobs you don't think our country could use back...
That presumed situation is becoming less and less the case over time, as the Chinese add more and more technology componentry of their own. So your argument:
Thanks for making my point for me. We export high value added goods like integrated circuits and some low skilled low paid Chinese worker clicks the pieces together and turns then into toys and phones."
...is undermined by the fact that we import them right back here to the country where we used to do the whole thing. Pretty callous Todd. Even for you.
Anyways, consider that that portion of the report was anecdotal...note it doesn't give a quantitative measure of Chinese high technology componentry now added. Think about the numbers. We import $1.468 trillion, and export only $804.2 billions in 2004. The big spread likely indicates we are farming out a huge fraction of the "value added" industrial component. And if a big chunk of what we "export" is just coming back to our own market, then we really are "exporting" even less than we think.
BTW, you should be aware that you misspoke previously contending our export sector was $1.15 trillion in 2004. According to the report supplied by 1Rudeboy the U.S. exports in 2004 were only $804.2 billion. Our imports, meanwhile, were $1,468.3 billions.
As abstracted from the following summary table in Annex I:
U.S. exports of goods and services (including investment earnings) in 2004 are 22-fold greater than 1970 and 75 percent greater than 1994.
U.S. imports of goods and services (2004 $1,468.3 billions U.S. Imports) are 34-fold greater than 1970 and 117 percent greater than 1994.
With the value of U.S. exports (2004 $804.2 billions) increasing less than that of imports, the total deficit on goods and services trade (excluding earnings and payments on foreign investment) increased by approximately $119 billion from $497 billion in 2003 (4.5 percent of GDP) to $616 billion in 2004 (5.5 percent of GDP). The U.S. deficit in goods trade alone increased by $98 billion from $548 billion in 2003 (5.0 percent of GDP) to $664 billion in 2004 (5.9 percent of GDP). The services trade surplus declined by $3 billion from $51