China, America and the Coronavirus & The Shared Necessity Amid a Pandemic

The United States is still doing business with China. For your information, China makes many products found on Amazon. According to the latest business information data released by Amazon, the data shows that an average of 40 percent or more of the sellers is China businesses; this data was collected from the top 10,000 Sellers are a massive increase from 26 percent, up from 2 years ago (May 10, 2019). Overall, there are approximately 200,000 Chinese businesses currently selling on Amazon.

China purchased $165 billion in goods and services from the US in 2015; this represents 7.3 percent of all US exports and about 1 percent of total US economic output, according to the US-China Business Council.
In 2019, the US trade deficit with China was $345.6 billion. The most significant categories of US imports from China were computers, cell phones, apparel, toys, and sporting goods. China’s most significant imports from the US were commercial aircraft, soybeans, and semi-conductors.
Everyone has some working knowledge of President Trump’s trade war with China, where he has imposed a tariff (tax) on imported goods from China. China’s response was to tax US imports, and they reduced their imports of soybeans from $12 billion to $8 billion.
To date, the relationship between China and the United States is strained. But it has been strained for some 40 years going back to when President Nixon first reached out to the People’s Republic of China. Currently, the two hot topics that reported the most about are trade wars and Coronavirus. According to the Brookings Institute, four major structural discontinuities have put the relationship on a steep decline.
  • (1) both countries have grown dissatisfied with previous security issues
  • (2) China’s emergence as a global rule-maker
  • (3) China’s rise from a low-wage manufacturing hub to a technology power and
  • (4) unresolved questions about the nature of ideological or systems competition are fueling the tensions.

There is not a quick and easy fix since both countries are too big and powerful. A repair would require statesmanship, patience, and courage. It will come from a realization that both countries have a shared necessity.

According to Goldman Sachs, more than 2 million Americans are set to lose their jobs and file unemployment by next week due to a massive “unprecedented surge” in layoffs. Goldman Sachs analysts added March 15 to the 21st will see “the largest increase in initial jobless claims and the highest level on record.”

If analysts are correct, the number of Americans filing initial claims for unemployment will be more than triple the all-time high set in the early 1980s, and nearly four times as many as seen during the peak of the Great Recession.