> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net
> [mailto:owner-dakota-truck@bent.twistedbits.net] On Behalf Of
> jon@dakota-truck.net
> Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 5:41 AM
> To: dakota-truck-moderator@bent.twistedbits.net
> Subject: Re: DML: Made in China
>
>
>
> Steve Preston <steveophonic@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Jon,are you sure??
>
>
> Yep. :-) Its another one of those funny things in life
> that we all "know" but it just is not so. :-) It really
> does seem like everything in the US is made in China, and
> although China is one of our largest importers, they only
> make up a small fraction in the grand scheme of things. Many
> thanks to Dustin for that US Census link; I had not come
> across that particular one myself, I was working off of a
> couple of other Census reports (China to US exports and total US
> imports) and extrapolating the 7% figure. The link that
> Dustin posted shows that the 2007 (through November) imports
> from China were just over 12% as opposed to my calculation of
> just over 7%, the reason for the difference is the import
> numbers I was using were for both goods and services, and the
> 12% is for goods alone.
This table from the same site as previously mentioned (actually the same
page), shows the breakdown of imports and exports. As you can see,
China is our top source of goods at 16.5%, but Canadia makes up for that
and becomes our top trade partner by being our top destination of goods
at 21.6%. Not that it really matters.
>
> Had I not done the research, I wouldn't have thought it
> true myself. I stumbled across a statement a year or two ago
> while reading an economics book that said China only
> accounted for about 10% of total US imports, and I thought
> there was no way - I HAD to check that out. However, using
> the US gov't data, it is pretty easy to verify.
>
> My assumption is that most of what China is exporting to
> us are the everyday type of consumer goods which have a great
> deal of constant visibility, and hence create the illusion of
> a larger than actual percentage.
>
>
I'm glad you finally made that point. However, the relatively low
national percentage of imports from China is largely irrelevant to
end-users. Whatever the percentage of imports may be, the volume of
items on the shelves of any Big Box retailer is much, much higher. The
number that really matters to those of us who actually buy stuff is the
*percentage of the consumable goods available to us* from China versus
those available from anywhere else. I sincerely doubt that our choices
of consumable items are as wide open as the low percentage makes it out
to be.
> --
> -Jon-
>
> .- Jon Steiger -- jon@dakota-truck.net or jon@jonsteiger.com -.
> | '96 Kolb Firefly, '96 Suzuki Intruder, Miscellaneous Mopars |
> `-------------------------------- http://www.jonsteiger.com --'
Seriously, I would encourage you all to read some Milton Friedman for
some background on where Jon comes from. I had to read some of his stuff
in college; excerpts from his various papers and books. He won the
Nobel Prize in Economics in the '70s and was an economic advisor to
Thatcher and Reagan. His views on economics changed throughout his life,
but his late works (Probably because at that point he was quite wealthy)
form the dogma of the Church of Modern Conservative Economic Thought.
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