Steven25's Blog

Trump’s administration’s narrativs disconnected from reality – Arnaud BERTRAND

@RnaudBertrand

06.04.2025

If you need just 2 charts to understand just how disconnected from reality the Trump administration’s narrative and actions are, these are it. If you were to listen to them, you’d think that the „China shock“ de-industrialized America and, in the words of Scott Bessent himself (in his interview yesterday with Tucker Carlson), that „China’s export level relative to their GDP“ are so out of proportion that „we’ve never seen anything like this“. The only problem is that none of this is true. Which is a big problem because when you act upon a wrongful understanding of reality, your actions will at best be ineffective, at worst be self-harmful. The truth is that China is actually NOT anywhere near an „export economy“. They export a lot in absolute terms, that’s true, but as a percentage of their GDP China actually depends surprisingly little on exports. Have a look yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_trade-to-GDP_ratio

China is 159th out of 195 countries in the world when it comes to the importance of exports in relation to their GDP. Exports represent 19.74% of their GDP when the world average is 29.27%. Germany for instance can be said to be an „export economy“: exports represent 47.14% of their GDP. Or South Korea at 44%. But China? Definitely not. (…)