- US June deficit narrowed 16% to 60 billion. deficit with China dropped 30% to 9.5 billion, lowest deficit in 21 years, since February 2004. Now US expects 50 billion per month in tariffs revenue.
- China's trade surplus in June rose to 683 billion, exports to the United States sank nearly 22% year-on-year, exports to Africa and Southeast Asia surged at double-digit rates as Chinese businesses diverted sales to other markets. Chinese industrial profits however, plunged 10% in may 2025.
Meanwhile Trump is adding trillions in debt. And if the “reshoring” of manufacturing actually succeeds to any degree, tariff revenue will only go down.
It’s like a diet plan where an obese man is cutting off his own flesh. You might reach the weight goal, but the side effects will kill you.
Truth is someone doesn't know how to read NBS/MoF data.
Decompose Industrial Profit Index, export sector margins private sector / manufacturing have been growing ~3% yoy/ytd. Stuff PRC is driving hard like electronic machinery up 10%, general manufacturing up 7%, autos, computers, electronics, up 4%.
Headline "Industrial Profit Index" down because _domestic_ coal and fossil profit %'s collapsed, something like -50% for coal and -10% for fossil. Coal demand down due to renewable rollout, fossil because cheap RU imports. Energy industrial profit are mostly large SEOs which get's disproportionated weighted in Index by NBS who doesn't publish profit index ex energy -> most exporters private companies increasing profitability gets skewed by headline number. People see Industrial Profit Index down, thinking profits across sectors down, but it's just domestic/SEO energy profit dragging down other sectors whose profit index increasing. Reality is if PRC export to US down, but US imports from countries known to tranship/reroute from PRC up then PRC mostly not cutting margins/absorbing tariffs but diverting.
Dynamics is about how things change in response to other things changing (when people say "it's a dynamic situation" they mean it could change significantly in response to various factors; "thermodynamics" is about how things like temperature, pressure, available energy, etc. change in response to each other. And so on).
This is a busy infographic that fails to show any dynamics, and doesn't provide a lot of static information.
Also, the "makes/takes" framing kind of misses the whole point of how "trade" works.
kaibee•6mo ago
mshockwave•6mo ago