(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Were the US Washing Machine Tariffs Really Failures?

Tags

consumers, Federal Reserve, General Electric, imports, jobs multiplier, large residential washers, LRWs, manufacturing jobs, metals tariffs, safeguard tariffs, South Korea, tariff-rate quota, tariffs, U.S. International Trade Commission, University of Chicago, USITC, washing machines, Whirlpool, {What's Left of) Our Economy

It’s as close to a slam dunk conclusion as can be – at least according to economists, think tank hacks, and Mainstream Media journalists: The early 2018 U.S. tariffs on large household laundry machines have been a dismal failure.

Or have they been?

The levies belong in a category different from those of the main Trump administration trade-limiting measures because they were first mandated by an independent federal agency (the U.S. International Trade Commission, or USITC) via a long-standing legal process.  And they’ve been panned for supercharging costs for consumers, and padding the profits of the domestic industry to extents that dwarfed the new production and jobs they fostered. (Here’s a typical example of the press’ evaluation, drawing on equally typical research from the venerable University of Chicago and the even venerable-er Federal Reserve.)

What has gone oddly unreported has been the verdict rendered by the USITC – which came out in August. Sure, the agency is grading itself. At the same time, it’s privy to the most authoritative data (taken from the domestic and foreign companies involved themselves), and it’s surely worth noting that the Commission paints a significantly different , and brighter, picture.

The tariffs, put in place in February, 2018, affected the nation’s total global imports of these products, but mainly impacted such “large residential washers” (LRWs) from China, Mexico, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam – the biggest foreign suppliers to the U.S. market. The duties’ aim: stemming a sudden surge of LRWs that injure U.S.-based manufacturers. But they don’t shelter the domestic industry forever.

After three years – the amount of time the Commission has determined these domestic manufacturers need to adjust – they’re phased out for both the final products and many of the parts covered in the “safeguard order.” In addition, consistent with their surge focus, they only apply to imports above a certain level of units – a trade curb known as a “tariff-rate quota.” In all, moreover, the ultimate objective is to give victim industries time to adjust and then stand on their own two feet. That’s why detailed adjustment plans are a condition of receiving tariff relief.

To some extent, the USITC’s judgment doesn’t contrast dramatically different from that of the tariffs’ critics. Both noted (in the Commission’s words) “generally increased prices” and “decreased imports.” The Commission, though reported some developments generally missed by the critics (especially “some improvement in the financial performance of continuously operating [domestic] producers,” and market share gains for these companies) and some given decidedly short shrift (“increased production by two new U.S. producers” – both of whose owners come from South Korea, undoubtedly because the option of supplying the American market through exports was sharply limited).

The Commission didn’t address one of the critics’ most compelling points – that the new U.S. jobs were created at a cost to consumers (via the higher prices they’ve paid) of a whopping $817,000 per job. But the University of Chicago/Federal Reserve study actually conceded that this number might be an exaggeration, since manufacturing jobs (like all jobs) create a “multiplier effect” – that is, they foster additional employment in related industries ranging from suppliers of inputs to transportation, packaging, and warehousing services. What these researchers didn’t mention is that manufacturing’s jobs multiplier is unusually high.

Moreover, like virtually all scholars of trade, tariffs, and employment, the Chicago/Fed team neglected other benefits of manufacturing job creation (and prevention of further manufacturing job loss). These include:

>avoiding the wage losses suffered by displaced manufacturing workers who find work in lower-paid industries (an especially important consideration given today’s very low overall unemployment rates)

>avoiding the revenue losses incurred by these workers’ communities and the economy as a whole due to reductions in their taxable income;

>avoiding the increased pressure on social programs required to serve employees who can’t find new jobs – which encompass not only unemployment compensation but spending that seeks to address the pathologies that often follow working class Americans’ deteriorating personal finances, like divorce, delinquency, alcoholism, and opioid and other drug use, not to mention higher mortality;

>and the costs incurred by local businesses because of worker-customers who can no longer afford as many of their products and services, which of course reduces business’ own taxable income and additionally crimps public finance at all levels. (See, e.g., this highly cited study.)

The USITC report, moreover, shed light on another big reason that the costs-per-manufacturing-job-saved might be exaggerated: Not all of the increased costs of the tariff-ed products are due to the tariffs. In particular, the Commission listed no less than 14 factors other than import competition (and the tariffs placed on these goods) that affect the prices of LRWs. They range from raw materials, transportation, and energy costs to competition levels from substitute and between domestic producers, U.S.-based production capacity, productivity changes, labor contracts, and state and local government incentives, and demand levels at home and abroad (because all the U.S.- and foreign-owned manufacturers sell all over the world). The USITC then proceeded to ask producers, importers, and purchasers (retailers) to rate the importance of these factors on prices since the tariffs’ imposition in February, 2018.

The answers were reported in table III-26, and import competition levels were anything but dominant. Indeed, their importance consistently was rated by all three stakeholder as lower or no greater than that not only of raw materials costs (higher due to entirely separate tariffs on metals that were imposed by the Trump administration) but of energy costs, domestic production capacity (surely limited over time by the previous import flood), the allocation of this production capacity to other products, productivity levels, labor agreements, transportation and delivery costs, and domestic demand levels.

And adding to the case for reducing the costs per job figure: According to the official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, after jumping by 16.31 percent from the February, 2018 onset of the tariffs through that November, they’ve since fallen by 9.73 percent (through September).

In fact, this development leads to a major point completely missed by the tariffs’ critics. As also indicated by the phaseout schedule and the linkage of the tariffs to the submission of adjustment blueprints, the levies were never intended to produce instant results, or to furnish crutches forever. The USITC describes the implementation of these plans starting on p. IV-5 and, more revealing, presents the evaluations of the retailers – who are bound to be the most demanding judges.

The reviews are mixed, but varying numbers of these companies stated that the two domestic recipients of the tariff relief – Whirlpool and General Electric – introduced new products (the most commonly cited improvement), upgraded product quality, expanded marketing campaigns, bettered their customer service, and taken other positive steps (Table IV-2).

Will these measures prove sufficient? Even after the tariffs come off, definitive answers will prove elusive, because as made clear, the LRW trade policy picture contains so many moving parts. What does look definitive, however, is that so far, the critics have engaged in a flawed rush to judgment.

 

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A New North American Trade Study’s Crucial Footnote

Tags

automotive, Canada, Center for Automotive Research, Mexico, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, regional content, rules of origin, tariffs, trade bloc, Trump, U.S. International Trade Commission, U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USITC, USMCA, {What's Left of) Our Economy

That was some footnote Commissioner Jason E. Kearns apparently insisted be inserted into the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (USITC) recent report on the economic impact of the Trump administration’s attempt to rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In fact, it contains the key to giving this Congressionally mandated study of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) a passing or failing grade. And a special bonus – it indicates why all three countries should have followed my advice and turned North America into a genuine trade bloc.

The particular Kearns-related footnote I’m talking about (number 66, on p. 57) dealt with the USITC’s analysis of one of the most controversial (and in my view, most promising) provisions of the new framework for North American trade – which has been signed by the continent’s three governments but not yet ratified by any of their legislatures. It’s the agreement’s attempts to restructure automotive industry trade among the signatories. These proposed new arrangements matter greatly because trade in vehicles and parts represents such a big share of overall North American trade (more than 20 percent of America’s total goods trade with Canada and Mexico, according to this study).

In brief, at the Trump administration’s instigation, USMCA increases the share of a vehicle’s content that needs to be made somewhere inside the free trade zone in order to qualify for tariff-free treatment, and includes other measures aimed at curbing and even reversing the movement of U.S.-owned auto production and the related jobs from the United States to much lower wage and overall lower cost Mexico, along with the resulting flows of Mexican-assembled vehicles and parts into the American market.

The USITC concluded that although the new NAFTA would produce slight benefits for the American economy overall, including for domestic U.S. manufacturing, the new content measures (called “rules of origin,” or “ROO” for short) themselves would drag on overall economic performance. In fact, they would even slightly depress U.S. vehicle production, not increase it.

As always the case with such projections, these conclusions are based on numerous assumptions, and as almost always the case, at least some of these assumptions can be pretty dodgy. Two that I have special problems with: First, when it comes to auto parts, the USTIC only examines only trade and investment in engines and transmissions; and second, the Commission doesn’t take into the jobs multiplier of vehicle and parts manufacturing.

These assumptions surely skew the conclusions to the downside because, as important as engines and transmissions are, the report itself acknowledges that other parts nowadays represent about 37 percent of total domestic parts output; and because the auto industry’s multiplier effect is really high. Indeed, according to a 2015 report by the Center for Automotive Research, for each American job created in domestic auto or light truck manufacturing, seven other jobs are created in the rest of the economy. That finding is significant because the Center has claimed that the new origin rules would exact exorbitant costs, and because it gets significant funding from an auto industry that has expressed major reservations about them.

But much more fundamental issues are raised by that footnote 66, especially considering these questionable assumptions. Here it is in full:

“Commissioner Kearns notes that, as described above, the model appears to suggest that the trade restrictiveness of a ROO is inversely related to its positive impact on the U.S. economy. Carried to its logical conclusion, this would appear to suggest that the best ROO is a very weak or nonexistent ROO. In turn, this would result in other countries, which do not incur any obligations to import U.S. products, obtaining unilateral, duty-free access to the U.S. market. If, on the other hand, we were to compute an ROO that optimizes regional content while recognizing that there may be slack in the economy, we may estimate a gain to the overall economy from the automotive ROO.”

Kearns first observation not only makes perfect sense. It’s the only sensible macro-conclusion that can be drawn about rules of origin. Because their complete absence (the counter-factual the Commission seems to have ignored) would indeed permit non-North American producers to reap all the gains generated by the USMCA (mainly, unfettered access to the immense continental market) without incurring any of the obligations. That’s supposed to result in a net plus for the American economy, the predominant market prize in North America?

The second observation is even more interesting. It notes that much more stringent rules (those that would “optimize regional content”) could be expected to leave the overall economy better off than the current rules. And as I’ve observed, the low tariff penalties (2.5 percent) imposed on non-North American auto producers for ignoring the origin rules are guaranteed to minimize the gains they produce. Therefore, much higher tariff penalties – which would approximate those commonly associated with trade blocs aimed at minimizing imports – would come closest to maximizing that what the USITC calls “the gain to the economy from the automotive ROO.”

President Trump claims that an “America First” approach to trade policy distinguishes him sharply from his predecessors. Footnote 66 in the USTIC report makes as possible that a genuine “North America First” strategy would have best advanced that goal – and that in this case, anyway, there was no reward for timidity.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The August U.S. Trade Report – All Soybeans Edition!

Tags

agriculture, Census Bureau, China, exports, farming, intellectual property theft, soybeans, tech, Trade, trade war, Trump, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. International Trade Commission, USDA, USITC, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This belated report on last Friday’s U.S. trade figures (for August) focuses on soybeans for what should be glaringly obvious reasons. They make up by far the most important sector of the American economy, and any President, like Donald Trump, who risks its well-being for a trifling objective like preventing China’s domination of the world’s industries of the future – via rampant intellectual property theft, extortion, and other predatory practices – must have rocks in his head.

OK, I’m now pulling my tongue from my cheek. But given the massive coverage of U.S. soybean farmers’ woes resulting from Chinese retaliatory tariffs that are ruining their sales in their biggest foreign market by far, it seems appropriate to see what the numbers say. Especially because so far, they’re showing nothing close to a trade-led Soy-Mageddon for American growers.

The latest Census report pegs the August year-to-date current dollar soybeans exports increase at a robust 39.16 percent (from $13.10 billion to $18.75 billion). I’d like to provide the comps for the previous years, but they don’t seem to be terribly consistent with each other.

This rapid growth could well reflect the export front-loading in advance of expected tariffs that’s been widely reported. (For a compelling contrarian view, see here.) As a result, it could disappear completely, or even shift into reverse during the rest of the year. But if soybeans exports do tank between now and year-end, no one would be more surprised than the analysts at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). They keep raising their full-year 2018 export forecasts (measured in quantity, not value, terms). So why are prices so weak? Largely because even though they professed to be worried about China tariffs, America’s farmers just kept planting ever more soybeans. And planting. And planting. In fact, this year’s harvest is expected to be the biggest ever.

And speaking of the Agriculture Department, the soybeans story doesn’t end with the Census reports data. Why not? Because they differ dramatically from those calculable from the U.S. International Trade Commission’s (USITC) interactive Trade Dataweb search engine. And since the USITC statistics are the ones used by USDA, they’re worth looking at, too.

These year-to-date figures only go up to July so far, but they don’t point to any tariffs-led Soy-Mageddon, either. As with the Census data, the numbers are in current dollars, and rates of change are to their right:

2016:  $10.062 billion (+25.67 percent)

2017:  $9.076 billion (-10.86 percent)

2018:  $8.452 billion (-6.87 percent)

So yes, soybeans exports are down this year, according to the USITC. But they fell during the same period last year too – at a faster rate, even though no China tariffs or threats thereof were on the horizon. Moreover, prices this year have been falling faster than in years past for various reasons – including the actual and threatened tariffs, but as made clear above, not solely because of them.

As mentioned, these USITC figures don’t adjust for these changing prices. But the Commission helpfully provides quantity numbers as well. Here they are for the same seven-month time period, in metric tons, along with the percentage changes:

2016:  20,113 (+9.96 percent)

2017:  22,366 (+11.20 percent)

2018:  24,635 (+10.14 percent)

That is, adjusted for falling prices, soybeans exports have been rising a little more slowly this year than last, but faster than in 2016. And the rates of increase haven’t changed markedly. 

Farming is a tough business, and with a genuine U.S.-China trade war having broken out, with no end in sight, no one can legitimately blame American soybean producers for feeling nervous about the fallout.  But the evidence keeps getting clearer and clearer that, even in the mixed U.S. economy, supply and demand still play a big role in determining prices, and that soybean growers jacked up the supply enormously in recent years. If they want to get out of their current fix, they’d do well to stop complaining so much about the Trump tariffs and start getting that message.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Where’s the (Trump Tariff-Created) Consumer Price Inflation?

Tags

Best Buy, Breitbart.com, canned goods, consumers, inflation, John Carney, tariffs, Trade, Trump, U.S. International Trade Commission, washing machines, Wilbur Ross, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Have you been shopping for any Labor Day bargains this weekend? If not, you might check out the deals on washing machines. Or just wait a little longer and you could save even more money.

Why on earth am I giving out this kind of consumer advice? Because in recent months, data pointing to soaring prices for these appliances were repeatedly touted as proof that the kinds of tariffs slapped on these goods early in the year – and representative of the trade policy approach generally favored by President Trump – would backfire on American consumers and seriously weaken the consumption-driven U.S. economy.

The tariffs on large residential washing machines went into effect in January, when President Trump approved a recommendation from the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC)– an independent federal agency – to use such measures to counter a surge of these appliances that threatened the viability of domestic producers. (In this way, they did not result from trade diplomacy being conducted by the administration aimed at reworking existing trade deals like the North American Free Agreement or allegedly lopsided relationships like U.S.-China trade.)

But although prices for these appliances have shot up, advertising for dishwashers that’s appeared this weekend indicates that more powerful countervailing economic trends – trends that, incidentally, have hardly been secrets – will quickly begin bringing them back to earth. Specifically, as I’ve noted, despite moving into its tenth year, the current American economic recovery has been too weak, wages and incomes have been too stagnant, and consumers have been too cautious to permit such prices to stick for any serious length of time.

As a result, I wasn’t at all surprised to see Best Buy, a pretty typical appliance retailer, offer the following specials:

>A Whirlpool model marked down from $474.99 to $349.99. (More than 25 percent off.) Whirlpool, incidentally, was the plaintiff in the USITC trade law case that resulted in the tariffs;

>A KitchenAid machine being discounted by nearly 18 percent from its $1,034.99 list price – on top of free installation;

>Two Samsung washers being offered for more than 18 percent less than their $674.99 list price.

>An LG model on sale for $749.99 – nearly 17 percent below its $899.99 list prices.

And P.S. All these offers entail a price match guarantee, as well as “open box” versions of these products that can be had for much, much less.

And don’t think for a minute that washing machines are the only tariff-ed product for which price predictions are looking awfully Chicken Little-ish. Right after President Trump made his initial announcement of tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was widely ridiculed for going onto CNBC and using cans of soup as props to argue that the levies would only marginally impact the prices of these goods. Moreover, canned goods producers strongly disagreed.

Yet as reported last week by Breitbart.com‘s John Carney, the latest official inflation figures show that, as of July, the prices of a variety of canned goods – from soup to fruit – have actually fallen year-on-year. Canned beer and vegetables did get more expensive, but by a mere 1.40 percent – much less so than the overall 2.40 percent rate of inflation. And the prices of other metals-using products, like cars and trucks and auto parts, were up just fractionally at best.

I’ve noted previously that there are any number of valid arguments that can be raised against the Trump trade policies. And no one has a perfectly clear crystal ball. But with the predicted effects on employment, output, investment, and now consumer prices so far not coming close to panning out, it’s now clear that the tariff opponents are rapidly running out of arguments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: So You Think There’s Free Trade in Steel?

Tags

China, overcapacity, steel, subsidies, tariffs, Trade, transshipment, Trump, U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. International Trade Commission, World Steel Association, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If there’s anyone out there who honestly believes that global steel trade has anything to do with free trade or free markets, and that many of America’s leading trade partners other than China are directly or indirectly complicit in rigging this commerce against the United States, here’s some data you need to see.

And P.S. – notwithstanding their own efforts to keep government- subsidized Chinese metals out of their markets, and the lip service they pay to the idea of cooperating to cut China’s massive overcapacity, the number of countries whose steel industries in particular have been doing just fine all the same should make clear why World Trade Organization (WTO) and other multilateral actions can’t possibly address the underlying problem of the Chinese state-sponsored glut. At least not until via tariffs or similar measures, Washington makes clear that the economies, who comprise the vast majority of WTO members, can no longer abet the Chinese with impunity.

First, let’s look at the percentage of world steel output by country (or political grouping, in the case of the European Union), and how it’s changed recently. These are volume figures from the World Steel Association for the world’s leading steel producers:

         2010                                                   January, 2018

US:    7.46                                                           4.89

China:   42.62                                                    48.05

EU 27: 12.18                                                    10.32*

Japan:   7.73                                                        6.48

South Korea:   4.12                                             4.39

India:   4.82                                                         6.47

Vietnam:   0.30                                                    0.76

Taiwan:   1.39                                                      1.41

Turkey:   2.06                                                      2.28

Brazil:   2.32                                                        2.06

Russia:   4.48                                                       4.09

Thailand:   0.29                                                    0.30

Canada:   0.92                                                      0.82

Mexico:   1.18                                                      1.16

Argentina:   0.36                                                  0.25

South Africa:   0.54                                             0.41

Egypt:   0.47                                                        0.47

Australia:   0.51                                                   0.35

* The January, 2018 figures are for 28 European Union countries.

What leaps out from these statistics: Except for Australia, the country that has lost the greatest percentage of global output share by far during this period has been the United States. And everyone else has either gained or pretty much held their own. Anyone care to explain this development by arguing that the United States has the world’s least competitive major steel sector? By a mile?

Next let’s take a look at changes in steel-producing countries’ exports to the United States over the last year. In and of themselves, they don’t prove that these economies are transshipping steel to the American market to help Beijing evade recent U.S. tariffs on Chinese steel, or that they have been responding to their own China steel problems by ramping up their exports to the United States. But the size and suddenness of these export increases is certainly noteworthy. In particular, it’s kind of amazing how much surge capability these figures make clear is apparently possessed by smallish countries.

Here’s how America’s steel imports have increased by volume in percentage terms from some important steel producers between the third quarter of 2016 and the third quarter of 2017, according to the U.S. Commerce Department’s latest figures:

global total: +19.56

China: -5.0

India: +209.0

Russia: +64

Taiwan: +36

Thailand: +274

South Africa +68

United Arab Emirates +98

Many of the value figures, drawn from the U.S. International Trade Commission, are even more striking. (These numbers cover iron and steel products and their percentage increases between full-year, 2016 and full-year, 2017.) Some of these percentage increases reflect the “law of small numbers” – the ease with which modest increases in absolute terms can generate big relative increases when the baseline is low.

But all of the below countries sold at least $13 million worth of iron and steel products to the United States in 2017. Also, all of the below increases followed sizable, and some cases enormous, decreases between 2015 and 2016, when overall U.S. imports fell by 25.7 percent. And this list leaves out countries whose iron and steel exports to the United States grew in both years, but ramped up rapidly in 2017. The main examples are Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, Kazakhstan, and Peru.

World: 35.6

China: 15.2

EU 28: 19.4

Japan: 1.6

South Korea: 21.2

India: 88.8

Taiwan: 33.1

Brazil: 51.8

Russia: 98.1

Australia: 65.4

Thailand: 213.7

Canada: 26.6

Mexico: 27.4

Argentina: 198.6

Albania: 583.5

Bahrain: 26,148.1

Belarus: 116.9

Colombia: 96.6

Georgia: 57.0

Guatemala: 430.1

New Caledonia: 70.7

New Zealand: 64.8

Oman: 81.1

Pakistan: 41.1

Peru: 127.4

Philippines: 147.1

Saudi Arabia: 794.5

Ukraine :111.1

United Arab Emirates: 123.7

Zimbabwe: 376.1

These data paint a compelling picture of the world’s leading steel producers complaining endlessly about the distortions created by China’s state-created global steel glut – to the point of creating a special multilateral forum for addressing the issue – but playing footsie with the Chinese behind the scenes at American steel producers’ expense. Which places a heavy burden of proof on opponents of President Trump’s response to explain how this situation bears any resemblance to free trade, and why broad-based tariffs aren’t an absolutely essential response.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Trade Myths That…Aren’t

Tags

chemicals, China, competitiveness, consumer electronics, Employment, gross domestic product, inflation-adjusted growth, machinery, Matt O'Brien, recovery, Robert Samuelson, Trade, Trade Deficits, U.S. International Trade Commission, Washington Post, {What's Left of) Our Economy

To say it’s been a bad week at the Washington Post for trade policy coverage and commentary would be a gross understatement. As I pointed out over the weekend, columnist Colbert King on Sunday tried to sell the contemptible idea that many critics of job- and wage-killing American immigration and even trade policies are motivated by racism. Yesterday, no one at the Post sank nearly that low, but the economic ignorance put on full display by two of its leading lights was nearly as depressing.

First came the latest offering by economics columnist Robert Samuelson, describing as “myths” the claims that “Persistent U.S. trade deficits reflect recent free trade agreements” and that “The large trade deficit ($540 billion in 2015) is an important cause of the U.S. economy’s slow growth.”

It seems that Samuelson isn’t familiar with the Census Bureau’s data on America’s non-petroleum goods trade flows. These measure imports and export flows that strip out oil trade (which hasn’t been an issue in trade negotiations and, until recently, in any aspect of trade policy) and services trade (where trade agreements have made only modest liberalization progress.)

As a result, these non-petroleum numbers present the trade flows that are heavily influenced by not only trade deals but by related policy decisions like dealing (or ignoring) currency manipulation. And the Census data show that since the onset of the recovery, it’s up from As made clear by my new article for Marketwatch.com, it jumped from $263.78 billion after inflation on an annualized basis to $681.74 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.

Early in his article, Samuelson attributes this trend to the dollar’s existential strength, but in his conclusion, he also blames policy mistakes – specifically, Washington’s failure to “police” currency manipulation and illegal subsidies. So it seems that this myth is far from mythical.

And as made clear by my Marketwatch.com piece, this strong recovery-era non-oil trade deficit rebound has slowed the growth rate of the current sluggish expansion by more than $400 billion in inflation-adjusted terms. The absolute numbers involved, as suggested by Samuelson, are indeed smallish compared with the size of the U.S. economy (currently $16.46 trillion in constant dollars).

But in calculating the trade deficit’s impact on growth, that’s not the number that counts. What matters is the growth itself, which since the recovery began in the middle of 2009 has been a bit less than $2.1 trillion. So that $400-plus billion trade deficit growth figure amounts to a nearly 20 percent slice – which sure sounds like it deserves adjectives bigger than the “modest” used by Samuelson. In fact, had the real non-oil goods deficit simply remained stable during the recovery, last year’s American inflation-adjusted growth would have been just over three percent, not just under 2.40 percent. That rate of expansion – the U.S. post-World War II norm – hasn’t been achieved in a decade.

Comparably uninformed was Matt O’Brien’s post the same day contending that the threat China’s economic rise has posed to American employment and wages “is slowly starting to go away.” O’Brien cites by-now familiar claims that China’s cost advantage over the United States is quickly vanishing, largely because the PRC ostensibly faces a labor shortage after decades of glut.

I’ve already poked numerous holes in the “overpriced China” meme; if you’re curious, start with this post. But what’s also missed by O’Brien – and so many others – is the threat posed by surging Chinese competitiveness in capital- and technology-intensive industries where labor costs by definition are secondary. It’s easy to measure this rising competitiveness by examining the detailed U.S.-China trade data put out by the U.S. International Trade Commission. And for numbers showing astonishing catch-up – and more – there’s no need to go back to 2001, when China was admitted to the World Trade Organization. Even developments since 2009, the start of the current American recovery, have been stunning.

Here are how America’s trade balances with China in major advanced manufacturing industries have worsened from that point through the end of last year in pre-inflation dollars):

telecommunications equipment: 160.68 percent

farm machinery and equipment: 65.32 percent

construction equipment: $33 million surplus to $953 million deficit

search, detection and navigation instruments: 65.82 percent

semiconductors: 407.85 percent

iron and steel: 34.50 percent

relays and industrial controls: 182.42 percent

ball and roller bearings: 265.62 percent

turbines and turbine generator sets: 62.41 percent

electro-medical equipment: 313.40 percent

metal-cutting machine tools: $118.71 million surplus to $3.68 million deficit

plastics materials and resins: 20.87 percent

And P.S. to O’Brien: These sectors remain very important American employers.

Not that encouraging data is lacking. Here, for example, are some representative high value manufacturing sectors where the U.S. trade balance with China improved between 2009 and 2015, and the size of the improvement:

semiconductor manufacturing equipment: 297.66 percent

pharmaceutical preparation: 483,530 percent (not a misprint!)

analytical laboratory instruments: 106.18 percent

electricity measuring and testing devices: 528.43 percent

surgical and medical instruments: $90.44 million deficit to $248.80 million surplus

metal-forming machine tools: 75.68 percent

aerospace: 195.10 percent

One further problem, though, is that with the prominent exception of aerospace, the trade numbers of the worsening sectors are much bigger than those of the improving sectors. So surely the employment numbers are bigger, too.

Indeed, if you move out to broader manufacturing groupings, you find rapidly deteriorating American competitiveness in areas far removed from widely acknowledged Chinese areas of advantage like smart phones and other consumer electronics products, as well as electronics components. For instance, in non-electrical machinery, the U.S. bilateral deficit has risen by nearly 147 percent since 2009, and in chemicals, a $2-plus billion surplus is now a $468 million deficit. Curiously, the former have been described in the Wall Street Journal as “global champions” and the latter was thought destined for a huge competitiveness boost from cratering prices for natural gas, a key feedstock.

There may of course still be plenty of facts and figures to marshal on behalf of the case that American workers and voters have little to fear from and lots of reasons to support current trade policies. But if these two Post pieces are any indication, supporters of these strategies will need to work much harder to find them.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Data Details Suggest Obama’s Got the Wrong Trade Strategy

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Census Bureau, economic growth, exports, free trade deals, imports, Obama, recovery, Trade, trade agreements, Trade Deficits, trade surpluses, U.S. International Trade Commission, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since it will be months at best till a new trade agreement comes before Congress, trade policy has almost disappeared as a subject for mainstream media coverage and commentary. More’s the pity, since the details of the latest set of U.S. Government trade figures strongly indicate that President Obama keeps missing a great opportunity to energize the still-phlegmatic American recovery. His key mistake: emphasizing export growth.

Thanks to the U.S. International Trade Commission’s terrific interactive trade flow database, anyone wonky enough to want to play with it can see why restricting imports is a much better bet for faster U.S. growth – and therefore job creation.

The proverbial view from 30,000 feet provides support for the export focus – and the related view that the strong U.S. dollar lately is inflicting the most damage on that side of the trade ledger. For these data, let’s use the Census figures from that bureau’s latest monthly report on American exports and imports. And let’s zero in on manufacturing, since oil trade has almost nothing to do with trade policy decisions, and since the prices of raw materials have been so depressed in recent months. Those price changes dramatically influence detailed trade data for these products, because such figures don’t factor in inflation or disinflation.

The Census statistics make clear that, from the first six months of 2014 through the first six months of 2015, U.S. manufactures imports were indeed up – by 2.85 percent. But exports of industrial goods dropped by a considerably greater 4.61 percent. In other words, score one for the export-oriented. A closer look, however, reveals the first cracks in the case for emphasizing overseas sales: Because import flows are so much greater, their increase amounted to about $26.5 billion, while the export decrease totaled only about $17 billion.

And the further down you drill, the better import curbs look. Consider this exercise. I looked at the 2014-15 trade flows and balances for the 20 categories of manufactured goods that produced the biggest export numbers during that period. Not surprisingly, they include major industries like aerospace, semiconductors, organic chemicals, plastics and resins, pharmaceutical ingredients, construction equipment, telecommunications gear, and surgical and medical equipment. Perhaps somewhat more surprisingly, this group also includes autos, auto parts, computer parts, and steel.

Over the past year, ten of these sectors saw their trade balances worsen, and ten saw them improve. Remember that when trade balances get better (whether via expanding surpluses or shrinking deficits) America’s growth speeds up. When surpluses decrease or deficits increase, growth slows down. More to that exports vs imports point, exports fell year-on-year for 12 of these 20 sectors and rose for eight, while imports rose for 15 and fell for five. That alone is a tantalizing sign that even America’s biggest export winners also face powerful foreign competition for their home market. At least as revealing, this competition has persisted even though U.S. growth has been weak, and should be at least slowing the rise of imports.

Even more interesting, of the 15 cases in which imports rose, they increased by double-digit percentages in four instances, and by near-double digits in three more. Yet of the 12 cases in which exports decreased, only three did so by double-digit percentages and only one other was near that ballpark. These results clearly point to stronger import flows.

It’s true that, as suggested above, because imports so greatly exceed exports in America’s manufacturing trade, looking at percentage moves can mislead. In fact, of these 20 leading export winners, 13 were still running trade deficits as of the mid-point of this year. (More encouragingly, nine of these gaps had narrowed.) But that statistical reality seems trumped (no pun intended) by a truth that even trade and export cheerleaders will always be hard-pressed to deny even in the best of economic times: The United States will never be able to open foreign markets nearly as easily as it can control its own.