And according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in the whole of 2017, the U.S. and China's bilateral import and export of goods amounted to 635.97 billion U.S. dollars. Of this, U.S. exports to China amounted to $130.37 billion and imports from China amounted to $505.60 billion, leaving the U.S. with a trade deficit of $375.23 billion.
You can see that there is a huge difference in the data between China and the United States due to the difference in statistical caliber. If you follow the perspective of the global value chain, the data on the U.S. deficit should be discounted by about half. In addition, China's General Administration of Customs announced on January 12, the U.S.-China trade data does not include data on trade in services between the two countries. This deficit figure would also be much smaller if China's huge deficit in services trade with the United States were taken into account.
The factors contributing to the trade deficit are many. In addition to the impact of statistical caliber factors, the main reason lies in the international industrial transfer and China's trade pattern. In the process of China's rapid economic development, China due to relatively low production costs and the existence of obvious comparative advantages, many countries or regions of the manufacturing industry gradually transferred to China, these countries or regions of the U.S. trade surplus to China, such as many foreign-funded enterprises or multinational manufacturing industry to enter China and so on. Simply put, it is the result of the transfer of manufacturing to our country.
From the trade structure, China mainly exports to the United States of textiles, clothing, shoes, toys, household appliances and travel luggage and other labor-intensive products. The United States, on the other hand, mainly exports to China capital- and technology-intensive products such as airplanes, power equipment, machinery and equipment, electronic devices, communications equipment and chemicals, as well as agricultural products such as grain and cotton, and trade in services. In fact, the U.S. has enjoyed the huge benefits of the international division of labor and international trade by importing cheap daily consumer goods and exporting higher value-added high-tech products. At the same time, the U.S. economy and the hegemony of the U.S. dollar, not only enable the United States to fully enjoy such benefits, but also can obtain a huge "mint tax" revenue.