Monitoring Desk
Trade between the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies — hit a record high last year even though their diplomatic ties reached new lows.
According to a report in the BBC, imports and exports between the two world powers totalled $690.6 billion in 2022.
Tensions recently heightened between Washington and Beijing after a Chinese balloon hovered across the US.
US-China trade war
The world’s two largest economies, had been locked in a bitter trade war since 2018, when former US President Donald Trump started imposing tariffs on Chines imports.
The new figures showed that US imports from China hiked to $536.8 billion last year as American shoppers spent more on Chinese-made products, including toys and mobile phones. Similarly, US exports to China increased to $153.8 billion in the same period.
While some of the increase in trade between the US and China resulted from a rising cost of living, the figures also pointed to how reliant the US and China still were on each other even after years of the trade war.
Founder of Asian Trade Centre Deborah Elms told the BBC that even if governments, companies and consumers wanted to separate, the economics make it difficult to deliver products in a decoupled world at a price that entities and consumers were willing to pay.
After decades of rising Chinese imports, Trump began imposing heavy tariffs on more than $300 billion of Chinese merchandise. China hit back by imposing import levies on about $100 billion worth of American products.
Most of those embargoes remained in place for over two years after Joe Biden became president.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had planned a visit to China from February 5 to February 6 to nromalise relations between the two countries covering a wide range of issues, including security, Taiwan and Covid-19. However, the much-anticipated trip was abruptly shelved after a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon flew over American space.
Chinese officials repeatedly claimed that the “balloon was for civilian use and it entered the US due to force majeure, and it was ultimately an accident.
