Trade
Source: WTO Data, Adapted from UBS
Global Trade When this century began, China was knocking on the door of the WTO and the U.S. was the leading trading partner of most major economies. Today, China has overtaken the U.S. to become the largest trading partner for nearly every major nation.32 Illustrated by the graphic on the following page, by 2018, 130 countries traded more with China than they did with the U.S., and more than two-thirds of those countries traded more than twice as much with China.33 With the launch of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in January, China has also now surpassed the U.S. as the leader of the world’s largest free trade block. As Xi Jinping explained last April, China’s strategy in thickening trading relationships is not just to spur its own economic growth. It is to increase other nations’ reliance on China. China’s goal – in Xi’s words – is to tighten “international production chains’ dependence on China, forming a powerful countermeasure and deterrent capability against foreigners who
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While China is the largest trading partner of most nations, major economies continue to export more to the U.S. than to China and import more from China than the U.S. “Country Snapshots” World Bank, https://wits.worldbank. org/countrysnapshot/en/.
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Alyssa Leng, Roland Rajah, “Global trade through a US-China lens,” The Interpreter, December 18, 2019, https:// www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/chart-week-global-trade-through-us-china-lens.
The Great Economic Rivalry: China vs the U.S.
