With increasing tension between the world’s two largest economies – over rare earth minerals, over Chinese students at U.S. universities – a look at some data points.
Which U.S. president – Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Barack Obama or George W. Bush – has been the best of China and export-import trade results?
With increasing tension between the world’s two largest economies – over rare earth minerals, over Chinese students at U.S. universities – it worth taking a look at some data points, some obvious, some less so.
Let’s start with an obvious one. Which of the four U.S. presidents reduced the U.S. trade deficit with China the most in a single term?
Donald Trump.
Maybe you guessed that one. Some less obvious ones are coming.
During Trump’s first term deficit declined $38.86 billion. Using U.S. Census Bureau data, I calculated the difference from the last full year of President Barack Obama’s term, 2016 – a „ground zero“ or starting point for Trump – and the last full year of his first term, 2020. That decline was from $346.83 billion when Obama left office in 2016 to $207.97 billion to 2020, Trump’s last full year during his first term.
Looking solely at this measure – and too many people do – Trump could fairly be described as the most successful U.S. president in handling the trade relationship with the world’s second-largest economy since China’s ascension into the World Trade Organization at the turn of the century.
And while Covid-19 played a factor in lowering the deficit, since it briefly shuttered the U.S. and global economies, the main factor was the tariffs Trump placed on almost all imports from China, tariffs largely kept in place by his successor, Biden, who also decreased the U.S deficit with China during his term.
These two presidents succeeded a long line of presidents that could, by today’s standards, be called “globalists,” a term used today as a disparagement by some. (Not me.)
But let us not forget that the U.S. trade deficit with the world has increased six of the last eight years – three under Biden and three under Trump, even as the deficit with China has declined.
When I looked past that one measure, when I looked past the deficit with China, I saw the hand all U.S. presidents had in shaping the course of U.S. trade policy toward the Asian nation. All had their own measures of success – and failure.Second question
So, here’s the second question: Which president hurt the ratio between U.S. exports and U.S. imports from China the most during a single term?
That would also be Donald Trump.
How so? When Obama left office in January of 2017, the percentage of U.S. trade with China that was a U.S. export during his second term averaged 20.47%. In other words, for every $100 of trade between the world’s two largest economies, $20.47 was a U.S export.
Four years later, when Trump left office, despite lowering the deficit, the ratio had slipped slightly to 20.06%.
That’s in large part because, after Trump initiated the U.S. tariffs, Chinese President Xi Jinping retaliated. China imposed tariffs on soybeans, passenger vehicles, jets, oil and other commodities – many of which have not returned to pre-Trump levels. I wrote about them in a post a week ago about the top 10 U.S. exports.
That change might not seem like much, and it’s not, but it stands out for another reason: It was the only decline in any four-year term since Bush left office.
