Is China buying abnormally small quantities of US products?
Donald Trump is taxing imports of Chinese products to the United States, his argument being that China is not buying enough US products, hence the US external deficit with China. But is China really buying abnormally small quantities of US products? We look at US exports to different countries (or regions) according to the size of these countries (production, exports) and their distance from the United States. We see that US exports to China are more or less normal, slightly low given China’s weight, but slightly high given the distance from China.