Impact of tariffs on China

Who are they fooling?

A lot about people saying China is going to "win" this trade war against the US and that it will do minimal damage to them. I don’t believe this is true and will lay out my argument in this article. No one is going to "win" this trade war, especially not China.

First of all

Before we start, let’s get something straight. I noticed a lot of analysts and journalists are believing economic numbers reported by the CCP. This is strange because China has been faking their numbers for decades. All the people who are actual experts on China and not just grifting will tell you this. China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is widely known for not being transparent. Experts started to raise an eyebrow in the '90s when China was reporting upwards of 7% GDP growth while their airline travel and energy consumption were down. Usually, when your GDP is increasing, your energy consumption and travel also increase. The NBS does occasionally go back and revise numbers, but they don’t do so for every year, especially the problematic years where numbers don’t add up. A study by the U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission in 2013 claimed, "The economic growth figures reported by local governments have regularly exceeded those of the central government. There is also anecdotal evidence of malfeasance by individual officials." When some experts realized this, instead of using GDP, they started to use rail cargo, bank lending, and energy consumption metrics to track growth. There are even issues with China’s employment numbers; their unemployment stays suspiciously low even during economic downturns.

We can’t trust Chinese economic data. So-called analysts and journalists who do so are either lazy or ignorant and are misleading their audience.

Sources:

New York Fed

St Louis Fed

University of Michigan - Kuzma Gu

The Economist

How Much Should We Trust the Dictator’s GDP Growth Estimates? - Luis R. Martinez

Thereliabilityofchina'seconomicdata

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