General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChina Passes U.S. to Become the World’s Biggest Trading Nation
(Bloomberg) China surpassed the U.S. to become the worlds biggest trading nation last year as measured by the sum of exports and imports, ending the U.S. supremacy in global commerce that emerged after the end of World War II in 1945.
U.S. exports and imports last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said yesterday. Chinas customs administration reported last month that the countrys total trade in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion. China had a $231.1 billion annual trade surplus while the U.S. had a trade deficit of $727.9 billion.
Chinas emergence as the biggest global trading nation gives it increasing influence, threatening to disrupt regional trading blocs as it becomes the most important commercial partner for countries including Germany, which will export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to neighboring France, said Goldman Sachs Group Inc.s Jim ONeill.
For so many countries around the world, China is becoming rapidly the most important bilateral trade partner, ONeill, chairman of Goldman Sachss asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia, India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, said in a telephone interview. At this kind of pace by the end of the decade many European countries will be doing more individual trade with China than with bilateral partners in Europe. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-09/china-passes-u-s-to-become-the-world-s-biggest-trading-nation.html
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)We need to understand that we are no longer the greatest industrial nation in terms of international trade. China has surpassed us and will be the market and resource of the future. And they have done it to a great extent thanks to American investment and technology.
Our so-called "capitalists" will rue the day they put their chips on China. That's my humble opinion. They can say bye-bye to their money if China decides to keep it.
China is the tiger in our backyard. It was just cute and sweet -- but it grew up.
Nothing against Chinese people. But it's just the economic and political balance that is changing drastically and our "capitalists" sped it along to the detriment of American working people. Too bad. The rise of China has only just begun in my view.
But they will have to do something about their pollution if they are to continue to develop. Their people will not put up with soaring asthma and cancer rates any more than we did. And the health detriments of careless industrialization are in addition to high wages of trained workers that our "capitalists" ran. Fools. The bad air can poison kids in Bel Air and La Jolla just like it can in Mexico City and Beijing.