With Chinese Visits Planned, Trade Deficit Is Front and Center

[weasel]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,192071,00.html

WASHINGTON — How much Americans pay for their next cell phones, weather-proof ski jackets, sport utility vehicles — or just about anything else they might buy — could be sharply affected by how well high-level talks go this week between the United States and China. In his first visit as president of China, Hu Jintao will arrive at the White House Thursday for meetings with President Bush, and trade is expected to be among the top priorities. Chinese policy-makers came to Washington, D.C., last week to meet with Cabinet officials ahead of talks between the nation's two top leaders. For American negotiators and policy-makers, the aim of those talks will be to knock back one of the most widely-quoted economic indicators: the $723 billion annual and growing trade deficit. "China in the past year has become our third-largest trading partner, and we welcome the rise of a China that is a responsible stakeholder in the international system; that is, a China that cooperates with us to address common challenges and mutual interests," James R. Keith, senior adviser for East Asia and Pacific affairs at the State Department, told reporters on Monday.

An interesting article; your comments are appreciated.

[tinybear]

China has cheap labor A trade deficit is inevitable, isn't it?

[tman_ndsu08]

Cheaper than our labor, that is.

If Americans would work for the rates that the Chinese are willing to work for, the jobs would come pouring back over here.

[weasel]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Cheaper than our labor, that is. If Americans would work for the rates that the Chinese are willing to work for, the jobs would come pouring back over here.

But thats what we have illegal immigrants for: to do the work we don't want to at a pathetic wage.

[tman_ndsu08]

Sure, that works too.

But even Mexicans expect more than what the Chinese are working for.

And once the Chinese and Indians start realizing that they can make more, it'll be some other ethnic group that gets the manufacturing jobs.

[rmnunez]

Others think its about oil:

Even as Mr. Hu arrived in Seattle on Tuesday, Chinese and American negotiators were debating a proposal for the two presidents to announce a joint study of both nations' energy needs as a way to ward off conflict in coming decades, when China's rapidly expanding need for imported energy to sustain its growth may collide with the needs of the US, Europe and Japan. The administration's focus on China's quest for oil was signaled when it published a revised National Security Strategy last month, approved by Mr. Bush, that contained a pointed new entry about China. That country's leaders, the document declared, are "expanding trade, but acting as if they can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world or seek to direct markets rather than opening them up, as if they can follow a mercantilism borrowed from a discredited era." "They are buying long-term supplies wherever they find them, including in unsavory places like Sudan, Iran and Burma, where we won't buy," said Michael J. Green, a Georgetown University professor who directed policy on China at the National Security Council until late last year. "They say it is benign, because they don't interfere with the internal affairs of other nations. And we say it is anything but benign, because it finances these regimes' bad behavior." The public discussion began in September, when the deputy secretary of state, Robert B. Zoellick, urged China to become a "responsible stakeholder" on the world stage. He suggested that China should rethink a policy of buying oil from the Burmese or the Sudanese simply because it could. "China's involvement with troublesome states indicates at best a blindness to consequences, and at worst something more ominous," Mr. Zoellick said at the time. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/19/wo...nt&oref=slogin

[Technosoul]

Late nite TV joke....
One of the visitors went to a store here to buy a gift to take back home to China, however everything in the store was marked "made in China". He got mad and called the manager of the store, "don't you have anything made in America" he protested.

[Arkangel]

Things could have gone well but who cares for protocol these days

It was cool TV to watch one pres. pulling the other pres. back.

I think the chinese would love it to see they way their pres got heckled and how Taiwan national anthem was played instead of theirs.

[bishop]

as expected, a whole lot of nothing was accomplished as far as bush and hu's encounter is concerned.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/04/....ap/index.html


i wonder who the other non-retards where that met with hu, besides gates..

[Aquietguy1]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 Cheaper than our labor, that is. If Americans would work for the rates that the Chinese are willing to work for, the jobs would come pouring back over here.

Are we can re institute tariffs. That's what we had when we were the worlds greatest manufactures.