No.....Not really.
All that consumer stuff....er...junk that we import is sold. That adds to GDP.
Consumers probably would not have bought the same sort of stuff in a high end store, but even if they did, it would be imported. We don't make anything! We live in a service economy. The goods sold are largely imported.
China is a export economy created to serve the needs of economies like ours. You affect the mechanism of trade between us, and the GDP's of both are affected.
You know why China is an export economy? It's not because the domestic market doesn't exist (it exists, and is growing massively).
It's because their Government ENCOURAGES exports! Imagine that! And they do it through that evil capitalistic means: economic incentive.
Most of China's taxes come from a B2B tax, like a VAT. If Two Chinese companies transact, there is a 17% tax on that transaction.
However, if a Chinese company sells to a foreign company (say, US or EU), then there is only a 6% tax on the transaction!
China has set its taxation laws to ENCOURAGE production and export of goods. You save 11% right off the top by exporting, rather than selling internally.
It's one of the reasons you can buy a 36" picture tube TV here for $100 (I kid you not; I was looking at one yesterday in the local Suning store for 699 RMB), but a 27" flat screen will run you $400 (2799 RMB). If you can export the product, you darn well do it because you get an extra 11% return on that export!
Only when you cannot reasonably export products do you sell internally and take the higher tax hit...
And it always freaks people out when the latest consumer products are 4X more expensive in China than in the US; no one wants to sell the new stuff here because you can get 11% more money selling it overseas.
What I mean is that imports are subtracted from the GDP.
GDP = Consumption + Investment + Gov’t Spending + (exports - imports).
Reduce imports, if you can buy the same stuff here in the US *even at the same price*, you increase GDP. If the price increases for necessary items made in the US, you’ll see the “consumption” portion go up, which also increases GDP.
As I said, I’m failing to see a problem in this tire trade restriction.
We still make plenty of tires - and plenty of steel. The idea that “we don’t make anything here anymore” is true only for a limited set of consumer schlock crap. We still make (or have the ability) to make plenty of stuff here in the US. We manufacture more stuff than anyone else, as a matter of fact.
The issue with China and our current account deficit, however, threatens the future of the US economy. The situation where consumer spending needs to be subsidized with easy lending kept that way by the Chinese buying our debt at low yields is simply not sustainable, and the longer we put off the reckoning, the worse it is going to be.