The part about China’s numbers not matching the activity at origination and destination ports implies the China may be lying about the actual shipping activity, something that also implies that trade is down as well. Another video delves into that aspect, stating the shipment of goods to the US from China is down 90% since the imposition of the 145% tariff on Chinese goods.
Even before this, China’s economy has been weakening with shutdowns and closures of some factories and scaled back production by other factories. How bad it really was before this is unknown so such claims should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. But if it is indeed the case then losing almost 50% of its overseas trade certainly won’t help China’s economy.
All of this aside, one has to ask the question about what brought us to this point? Some are pointing fingers at Trump, but this problem predates him by over 4 decades when the US government, particularly Congress and the administrative ‘state’, made it increasingly difficulty and costly to manufacture here in the US while making it attractive to move manufacturing overseas.
All of this makes me unsure of how all of this will shake out. At times it makes me wonder if we’re living out the old Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times.”