China ridicules US basis for tariffs, saying ‘real’ trade imbalance is only a third of what Donald Trump claims
- Commerce Ministry report shows trade deficit between the world’s two largest economies just 37 per cent of the figure published by the US government
- China and the United States are set to send delegations to a meeting of G20 trade ministers later this week in Japan
China’s “real” trade surplus with the United States is only about a third of the figure published by Washington, according to the Ministry of Commerce, in Beijing’s latest move to undercut the economic foundation for US President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products.
US Commerce Department figures show that the US had a US$419 billion deficit with China in 2018, while China’s customs data showed a surplus of US$323 billion.
However, in a statement published on Thursday, China’s Commerce Ministry argued that including the services trade and adjusting for processing trade, the gap would only be US$153 billion, or just 37 per cent of the headline figure published by the US government.
The ministry argued that in the processing trade – Chinese exports of products assembled from imported components – the valued added to the product by China is only a fraction of the value used in the US calculations.
There have always been divergence between Chinese and US figures on the bilateral trade gap due to different methods used, but the variation has generally been in the region of 20 per cent.
