Visualizing the US/China Trade Relationship
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Like it or not, the US and China have a trading relationship that has global repercussions. The plastic US flags that say Made in China don’t tell the whole story. No, not everything is made in China. In fact the US manufactures and exports almost as much as China but it consumes a great deal more. Hence, the trade imbalance. What’s interesting is exactly what the US imports, stuff like machinery and toys and as much steel and iron as it does shoes. And what we export — high-tech stuff like airplanes and medical equipment and, for some reason, 7 billion dollars worth of oleaginous fruit which is used to make cooking oil, presumably for Chinese food.
Click to enlarge the image below:
For more visualizations see: WallStats.com
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11 Comments so far
leave a commentLet’s take China out of the discussion. The real problem is that we have a large trade deficit.
What happens when you spend more than you earn? Oh yea…
Perhaps instead of generating interesting graphics, the mint team could address the many long outstanding issues with their service which users have posted in the forums.
I notice we import roughly $38 billion from Nigeria. Must be from all those Prince’s inheritances.
what do you think of this? (linkback) Useful or Useless? Visualizing the US and China Trade Relations [VOTE] – http://www.pikk.com/9587f
I find it funny how our national flag is made in another country. XD
i think they need to mention how china artificially devalued its currency against the dollar in the 90s…
Cool graph!
FunnyNumbers, a trade deficit is different from a budget deficit.
yep, a trade deficit is very different from a budget deficit.
I have a trade deficit with Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Amazon…. but they’re not complaining because they got my dollars in return. The Chinese don’t have much use for those dollars in their own country, so they invest them back here, or just fund our government’s fiscal irresponsibility in the form of T-bills! Yay!!!
I think there’s probably a little too much outsourcing going on, for some things it’s necessary to keep costs down, of course realize that means that the people overseas are getting exploited for cheap labor.
But a certain number of jobs should be kept locally so as to ensure adequate employment, otherwise a good deal of companies will put jobs in places where they can more easily exploit the workers and get cheaper rates.
ye, americans can print some more paper, so this chart is useless