China stands accused of trying to circumvent US tariffs on electrical equipment, machinery and other products shipped to America by re-routing its supply chain to the States through Vietnam, Taiwan and Mexico.
This has been revealed by separate findings from the US International Trade Commission and the International Trade Centre (ITC), the Nikkei Asia Review has reported.
Yet although Beijing seems to be pulling out all the stops to absorb and assail the impact of a long-standing tariff tussle with Washington, freight data released by the States purports to confirm that President Donald Trump’s tariff position is slowly tipping the trade scales against China.
In March the bilateral trade gap between the US and China shrank to $20.75 billion, the lowest since the same month in 2014. More recent trade data for the US and China is not yet available.
The shrinking imbalance between trade in-and-outflows between the two countries, a principal reason why Trump chose to institute tariffs against his country’s biggest trade partner, is also reflected by the spike in imports into the US from other countries, and reported growth in America’s manufacturing sector.
The shrinking trade gap furthermore follows in the wake of China’s exports to the US which tumbled $15.2 billion or 12% in 2019’s first quarter.
The Nikkei Asia Review, however, has questioned the accuracy of the Trade Commission and ITC’s data, reporting instead that China seems to be finding ways of cushioning the impact of the trade war with the US.
