You claim to be a 4th generation Houstonian, yet you still cling to some notion of being Irish? I don't understand that.
In other news, Chinese trade surplus to the US is inflated, as it runs huge trade deficit to other Asian nations.
Did you know that as a % of total imports, Asian imports to the US are actually lower than they were 15 years ago?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/b...tml?ex=1140238800&en=c601774a4e0e3659&ei=5070 Asian exports to the United States have actually slipped over the last 15 years.... The migration has left footprints in trade statistics. In 1990, Japan was the United States' dominant trading partner in the Pacific, and Asia accounted for 38 percent of all American imports. Last year, China was the dominant Asian trader. Its trade with the United States has risen some 1,200 percent since 1990, even as the Asian share of American imports slipped to 36 percent. What changed from 1990 to 2005 is that many goods became a lot cheaper as China took on a greater and greater role as the world's basic factory floor.
Thanks for covering for me, Buck. That was the same article that I had read. If the rest of you read the article, it has some very interesting things to say. In a nutshell China's trade surplus is greatly overstated because in the global supply chain, goods are tagged in the country of their final assembly (not along any other point in the supply chain), and since China has workers who are willing to work for incredibly low wages (15-30 cents per hour!!!), many goods get their final assembly there, even though most of the product was designed, conceived and put together in other countries. So basically the article says that the US is the big winner in all this by receiving very cheap goods from the folks in China who are willing to work for pennies.
Agree. That's basically many of us have been saying all the time. For example, goods assembled or produced for WalMart in China, where Chinese take 10% of the profit, and WalMart takes 90%, but 100% of the total price is counted as Chinese import to US.
Neither sincere or sarcastic, just facts. Whenever the PRC governemt needs to divert away people's focus from domestic issues, the Japs are the scapegoat (Sometimes the US too), in China You won't find the general public being hostile to Japan and the US. Japan is having the second highest amount of Chinese students, while the US is No.1, the choices show what the Chinese really think.
