{"id":411698,"date":"2010-03-10T04:01:56","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T09:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldtradelaw.typepad.com\/ielpblog\/2010\/03\/how-to-get-rid-of-a-trade-deficitsurplus.html"},"modified":"2010-03-10T04:01:56","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T09:01:56","slug":"how-to-get-rid-of-a-trade-deficitsurplus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/411698","title":{"rendered":"How to get rid of a trade deficit\/surplus?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The answer is simple: bring in a new set of bean-counters (sometimes
\nfrom a different country). This is essentially what the MOFCOM of China and DOC
\nof US did in their new \u201cReport on the Statistical Discrepancy of Merchandise
\nTrade Between the United States and <\/p>\n

China<\/p>\n

<\/st1:place><\/st1:country-region>\u201d, which was issued on March 4th <\/sup>(English version here<\/a>; Chinese version here<\/a>). After accounting for the differences created by transshipment through HK and
\nother intermediaries, mark-ups, and customs valuation, the discrepancy in the
\nstatistics have shrunken from a whopping 84.3 billion USD to a (still large but
\nnot so extreme) 24.2 billion USD. <\/p>\n

While this report adds nothing new to the intellectual
\ndebate as it has largely confirmed the works by KC Fung and Larry Lau (see this<\/a>
\nand this<\/a>) on the topic, this is probably the first time that the US government
\nopenly admits that part of the growing deficit with China might simply be statistical
\nrather than substantive.<\/p>\n

Now the question is: Does this mean that the US government will soften its stand
\non the currency issue?<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The answer is simple: bring in a new set of bean-counters (sometimes from a different country). This is essentially what the MOFCOM of China and DOC of US did in their new \u201cReport on the Statistical Discrepancy of Merchandise Trade Between the United States and China \u201d, which was issued on March 4th (English version […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6148,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}