This week, the United States and China continued to take action on commitments made during the leaders’ meeting in October.
As China’s local governments concluded their annual Two Sessions meetings last month, local GDP targets and personnel changes have been announced. These meetings are forerunners to the national Two Sessions, China’s annual parliamentary meetings which are scheduled to begin on March 4 and provide a window to the national economic outlook and forthcoming policies.
Despite bilateral tensions, years of escalating trade restrictions, and lockdowns in China for much of 2022, US-China trade in goods increased 5.2 percent in 2022 to a record high of $690.6 billion. Growth in trade with China is part of a broader wave of record US trade with the world.
Many companies are preparing senior executive travel to China for the first time in several years now that China has eliminated quarantine requirements on inbound travelers. To better understand the different factors companies are considering in planning executive travel to China, USCBC conducted a short survey to help members benchmark against each other’s plans.
Earlier this week, Select Committee on the CPP Chair Mike Gallagher (R-WI) returned from a surprise visit to Taiwan. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published upon his return, he noted that nearly all of the Taiwan officials he met with saw the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a wake-up call, and he argued that it must be a priority for the United States to clear the nearly $20 billion backlog of arms sales to Taiwan.
The Greater Cleveland Chinese Chamber of Commerce (Chamber) serves as a bridge between mainland Chinese who want to invest in the United States and Americans looking for business opportunities in China. The Trump-era trade war and the spread of COVID-19 brought big challenges to the organization.
US-China relations are at a difficult and highly uncertain inflection point. Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in the Munich Security Conference February 17 to 19. Secretary Blinken and President Xi Jinping’s top foreign policy adviser, Wang Yi, reportedly had a tense private meeting during which both sides drew lines in the sand and did not appear to de-escalate the balloon incident as was hoped.
American companies exported $192 billion in goods and services to China in 2021, constituting 7.5 percent of US exports. While expanding foreign trade can disrupt US employment, trade with China also creates and supports a significant number of American jobs.
Countries run a deficit when the value of their imports exceeds the value of their exports. According to recent polling by the Pew Research Center, about four in ten Americans see the US trade deficit with China as a very serious problem.
Last Friday, the Biden administration added six Chinese entities to the Entity List due to their connections to China’s surveillance balloon program. Yesterday, China responded by adding the defense and missile subsidiaries of two US companies to its Unreliable Entity List (UEL), the first time China has actually used the tool since it was created in 2020.
Chinese investments throughout the United States are under increasing scrutiny, with once uncontroversial projects now receiving national attention. A growing number of state and local regulators are racing to create new tools to review and block such investments due to political and national security concerns.
