In the past ten or more years, China has never had such a hard-line attitude toward trade frictions between China and the United States. Following Trump’s release of an additional $100 billion sanction list, China responded with only four words, ' Not only that, even the mainstream media used the words “not pretend to be unprepared” when they published their review articles. The last time this sentence appeared was on the eve of the counterattack against self-defense. Thus, China’s determination to win this trade war is evident.
As Japan’s two major exporters, the sharp increase in trade friction between China and the United States has also caused widespread media attention in Japan. Among them, the focus of attention is naturally on how much the trade war affects the Japanese economy. Some experts frankly stated that their impact on the Japanese economy is minimal, but can this really be the case?
According to the data, China’s exports to the United States reached 506.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2017, while the U.S. exports to China were only 130.7 billion U.S. dollars. The Sino-U.S. trade surplus reached about 370 billion U.S. dollars. In this round of trade war, the U.S. took close to 1,500 U.S. dollars. It is not difficult to imagine that China will have such a strong reaction.
Among them, China’s exports to the United States accounted for 5.4% of Japan’s total. Products are dominated by electronic products. Among the US exports to China, products containing Japanese parts account for only At 1.0%, the product is mainly based on automobiles and agricultural products. The above 5.4% accounted for only about 10% of Japan’s exports of electronic products. In other words, it means that the sum of the two adds up to the impact on Japanese GDP. Only about 0.6%. From the data point of view, the impact is indeed insignificant.
(Source: TV TOKYO)
On the other hand, the market is less optimistic. As the escalation of the trade war leads to an increase in market uncertainty factors, the sense of unease is gradually spreading. According to the results of a short-term forecast issued by the Bank of Japan, the future business situation of major Japanese companies may be presented. The deterioration trend. Perhaps the data in economics is minimal, and Japanese companies highly dependent on the global market have to face the market shocks brought about by real trade frictions.
(Source: TV TOKYO)
The effects of instability may have begun to appear. Prices of chemical products in the Asian market have shown recent wave momentum. Affected by the new US shale gas plant, naphtha prices rose by about 9% compared to February. Meanwhile, low-density polyethylene prices However, it was down about 8% year-on-year. Affected by Sino-US trade warfare, domestic companies may take countermeasures against US polyethylene products. As a synonym for the petrochemical industry, every move of PE (polyethylene) is likely to affect Japan. Equalization of industrial powers has an impact.
In addition, the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China has already raised the anti-dumping tariff rate applicable to imports of ethylene glycol and diethylene glycol monobutyl ether from the United States and some European Union companies. The tax rate is between 10.8% and 75.5%. China has always been the world. One of the largest consumer countries in the ethylene glycol (MEG) market, its consumption of ethylene glycol accounts for about 50% of world production. In China, consumption of ethylene glycol in China increased by 10% from the previous year in 2017. Affected the market price of ethylene glycol.
In the context of globalization, no country is an isolated island. Japan's difficulty in doing it alone just confirms this truth.