Research On The Strucutre Characteristics And The Causes Of The China-US Trade Imbalance

Since China and US established diplomatic relation, the bilateral trade between two countries keeps on developing. Meanwhile, the China-US trade imbalance is increasingly outstanding, which has led to frequent trade conflicts and frictions between two countries. Therefore discussing the reasons of trade imbalance is very important for the healthy development of China-US bilateral trade and the continuous growth of China. Taking the China-US trade imbalance as the research object, this essay analyses the structure of China-US trade imbalance and its tendecy, especially the trade of high-tech products, by the method of combining the SITC and Technical Content Classification together. Then in order to find the comparative advantages of two countries, the author calculates the RCA of the main products of China-US trade. The result proves that the China-US trade is complementary both in the technical content of the product and the comparative advantage. One factor of the trade imbalance is that the US limits their export of high-tech products to China, so that the comparative advantage of US on HT2 products is unable to be displayed. On the basis of the structure analysis, this essay discusses the factors causing the China-US trade imbalance from the following aspects: the economic structure of two countries, the different growth rate of industries, industry transfer within East Asia and the Trade competitiveness. The results shows that the low proportion of manufacture in GDP of US which is unable to meet the demestic commodity demand, and the high growth rate of the labor productivity of industry in which China has comparative advantage, especially the growth of Chinese products'competitiveness, are the basic reasons. The industry transfer within East Asia based on the vertical specialization enlarges the China-US trade imbalance. By the reason analysis above, this essay points out the China-US trade imbalance is caused by the economic structure of two countries and the international specialization, which will last for a certain period. In order to change the imbalance situation, two countries need to cooperate, especially the US who should take some positive measures.