Although Germany has not yet released the full-year export data for 2009, according to the current situation, it is a foregone conclusion that China has surpassed Germany to become a leading global exporter.
Although Germany has not yet released the full-year export data for 2009, according to the current situation, it is a foregone conclusion that China has surpassed Germany to become a leading global exporter. However, the laurel of “exporting ahead†has not made China much happy, as it is likely to face more, greater and more diverse trade protectionism risks.
The German Federal Statistical Office announced earlier this month that in the first 11 months of 2009, Germany’s total exports amounted to approximately US$1.05 trillion, while China’s exports for the same period amounted to US$1.07 trillion. German foreign trade institutions predicted that Germany’s full-year export value for 2009 was 1.17 trillion US dollars, and China’s exports in 2009 actually exceeded 1.2 trillion US dollars.
The greater trade protectionist pressure China faces is likely to come from the United States. The US Department of Commerce initially ruled on January 6 that the anti-dumping duty of 43% to 289% on wire mesh pallets imported from China was regarded by the industry as the beginning of a new year's trade friction between China and the United States.
In 2009, the United States began to step up trade protectionism measures against China, including anti-dumping tariffs of up to 99.14% on oil pipelines, and anti-dumping measures against China in the fields of tires, seamless steel pipes, barium chloride and ironing boards. . In addition, a series of trade protectionist measures are in the pipeline.
Lawyer Roger Shaglin, who is involved in the US-China trade friction case lawsuit, believes that there was a fertile ground for "anti-dumping and countervailing lawsuits increased substantially" in 2010. Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, recently defended US trade protectionism and encouraged the United States to launch a large-scale trade confrontation with China.
Chinese economists believe that trade protectionist measures against China are “absurdâ€. Zuo Xiaolei, chief economist of Galaxy Securities, pointed out that the US's huge trade deficit with China is caused by itself. "The US's reluctance to sell high-tech products to China is the main cause of its large deficit."
Another huge trade protectionist pressure will come from the EU. On December 22 last year, the EU decided to extend the anti-dumping duty on Chinese leather shoes for another 15 months. In the past few months, the EU has launched anti-dumping investigations on steel wire rods, seamless steel tubes, sodium gluconate, steel cables and aluminum alloy wheels in China.
Since November 208, China has suffered more than 100 trade protectionist barriers, accounting for more than one-third of the trade protectionist measures adopted by various countries in the world, ranking first in the world. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Commerce of China, in 2009, the number of trade frictions involving Chinese products exceeded one hundred, and the amount involved was about 12 billion US dollars, both of which doubled over the same period.
In addition, developing countries such as Argentina, India, Brazil, and Mexico have also launched anti-dumping and countervailing investigations on Chinese products, involving various products such as methyl chloride, centrifugal pumps, screw compressors, and hypodermic syringes.
According to statistics from the UK Trade Research Institute, the number of global discriminatory trade bills will far exceed the Free Trade Act, which is a 6:1 one-sided trend. More than 90% of the world's traded goods will be protected to some extent by trade protection measures. influences.
Trade protection measures have caused tremendous damage to China's related industries. Wei Yafei, director of the China Leather Association's leather shoes sneakers professional committee, said that since the EU imposed anti-dumping duties in 2006, China has reduced exports of about 40 million pairs of shoes to the EU. This alone has caused about 20,000 workers in China to lose their jobs.
Trade protectionism has forced consumers in countries such as Europe and the United States to buy goods at higher prices.
Lin Yifu, deputy governor of the World Bank, said in New York on the 7th that restricting China’s exports to the United States would not benefit the interests of American consumers and would not help solve the US trade imbalance. When the United States imports from other countries and regions, the cost will only be higher.
Zhang Junsheng, an expert at the University of International Business and Economics, believes that as the scale of exports expands, the external trade risks facing China will continue to rise. He pointed out that China's labor cost advantage will continue for a long time, and in the short term, high value-added products will not be able to dominate export.
"Only when China's industrial structure is adjusted, the risk of trade protectionism is likely to improve, but it will not disappear, it will always exist." Zhang Junsheng said.