This Could Be a Record Year for US-China Trade

Here’s a data point you won’t hear discussed very often: If the last few months of this year hold to trend, the US will have imported more goods from China in 2022 than in any year prior.

The next chunk of data will come Dec. 6 with the US release of October trade numbers, and there’s still time for the trend to shift— especially with China’s current Covid lockdown travails. But what’s already in the books is clear. In the first nine months of the year, the US imported $418 billion in goods from China, or $23.7 billion more than it did in the same period of 2018, the current record holder.

That’s worth thinking about given that, in the six years since Donald Trump launched his trade assault on China, the dominant story has been the supposed decoupling of the world’s two largest economies. The prevailing narrative of late suggests we’re living through the unwinding of an era of hyper-globalization, and that the world is busy reorganizing itself around geopolitical poles centered on Washington and Beijing.

But the trade data is a reminder that rhetoric and even policy don’t always reflect the global economy.