With Americans stuck at home, trade with China roars back

WASoINnTON >> U.S. imports from China are surging as the year draws to a close, fueled by stay-at-home shoppers who are snapping up Chinese- made furniture and appliances, along with Barbie Dream Houses and bicycles for the holidays.

The surge in imports is another byproduct of the coronavirus, with Americans channeling money they might have spent on vacations, movies and restaurant dining to household items like new lighting for home offices, workout equipment for basement gyms and toys to keep their children entertained.

That has been a boon for China, the world’s largest manufacturer of many of those goods. In November, China reported a record trade surplus of $75.43 billion, propelled by an unexpected 21.1% surge in exports compared with the same month last year. Leading the jump were exports to the United States, which climbed 46.1% to $51.98 billion, also a record.

That surge has defied the expectations of U. S. politicians, who earlier this year predicted that the pandemic, which began in China, would be a moment for reducing trade with that country and bringing factories back to the United States.

“The global pandemic has proved once and for all that to be a strong nation, America must be a manufacturing nation,” President Donald Trump said in May. “We’re bringing it back.”

But despite U. S. tariffs on more than $ 360 billion worth of China’s imports, there is little sign that global supply chains are returning to the United States.

China employed draconian lockdowns and extensive surveillance to shake off the effects of the pandemic, allowing its factories to reopen at a large scale more quickly than businesses in the United States, where the disease is still running rampant.

“Overall, China’s quick economic recovery and its dominance as a source for products that Americans have turned to during the pandemic have outweighed the dampening effect of Trump’s tariffs,” said Mary E. Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute.