Why China Won't Buy American

The New York Times:

The first time I visited China, in 2005, an American businessman living there told me that the country was so huge and was changing so fast that everything you heard about it was true, and so was the opposite. That still seems to be the case. China is the fastest-growing consumer market in the world, and American companies have made billions there. At the same time, Chinese consumers aren't spending nearly as much as American companies had hoped. China has simultaneously become the greatest boon and the biggest disappointment.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[madcityy]

12:12 PM on 01/30/2012

chicoms,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,not our palssssssssssssssss

[Killjoy]

11:56 AM on 01/28/2012

What would happen if the administration stop all imports from China or levy a tax so heavy on Chinese imports to the point where it wouldn't be worth it for American companies to export manufacturing jobs?

[Roy Merritt old car guy]

09:48 AM on 01/28/2012

Most people miss the main point of this story, we have a 24 billion dollar trade deficit with China every month, we can not keep this annual 500 billion dollar trade deficit with the world going forever. Our foreign trade policies look as if a 5th grader wrote them because he might get a candy bar before dinner. Our trade policies never do the American worker any good, Germany and the Scandinavian countries protect their home turf with trade policies that favor their own workers and that is why their healthcare system and standard of living is much better than the USA. Come on people, the Conseravative movement in this country is killing any chance for the American working public to have any chance of a decent standard of living. Every Conservative Republican state administration is hammering the working American deeper into substandard working conditions and wages, wake up.

[wardropper]

09:00 AM on 01/28/2012

China never buys from anybody.
Stop being so exceptionalist, Adam.

The first time I heard "No buy; only sell" from the Chinese was thirty years ago.

[cmr11]

08:46 AM on 01/28/2012

umm...... except for the fact that gm sells a car in china every 12 seconds..... they love gm cars and truck.

[Amalek]

09:04 AM on 01/28/2012

I live in China and have a Buick.  Had to wait 3 months for it.

[cmr11]

09:12 AM on 01/28/2012

has it been a good car? do you have much service support problems for it there or do they have a pretty good service system set up? i have been curious about that.

[paddlerchick]

08:43 AM on 01/28/2012

Sounds like American companies promoted these policies, made tons of money and now when it didn't work, act dumbfounded. They are just dumb.

[JP1493]

08:41 AM on 01/28/2012

Good article. Shows you how American companies (and politicians) are much more concerned with their share holder's profits then they are about the American economy overall. I'd call that unpatriotic myself (and greedy also).

[wardropper]

09:01 AM on 01/28/2012

Treason, in fact.

[Amalek]

07:42 AM on 01/28/2012

The article is out of date.  The yuan is no longer undervalued.  It is probably valued about right now - and recently has been under some pressure to devaluate.   

[MIKEinNYC]

06:11 AM on 01/28/2012

They can't afford it. What do you expect when you pay virtual slave-laborers subsistence wages?

[Mausinn]

02:08 AM on 01/28/2012

"...a country with an unbelievably cheap labor force and a thriving black market."

There's your reason right there. Why would they buy American Goods at retail when they are the ones who make them in the first place, and can just knock them off and buy the copy. Made by the same people from the same materials at a tenth of the cost. Face it, American companies were punked by the Chinese in the trade agreement area, and the American Workers are paying for it at both ends. Something that doesn't seem to bother the GOP in the least.

[mamacita]

05:55 AM on 01/28/2012

I wouldn't say American companies were punked, I'd say they were willing parties to the money scheme. They now consider themselves Global Companies instead of American, and they have made huge profits from the China trade deals. They use Chinese manufacturing to produce their goods, then get tax-payer funded assistance to help them "compete" with imports from China, because the market that produces their goods can't/won't buy their goods.

Follow the money. "American" companies, doing business as Chinese companies, benefit from the unbelievably cheap labor force, to export goods from China at lower cost, receiving tax incentives to help them "compete" against lower sales in the consumer markets from which they reduced demand by removing the wages that are now paid to China--who does not buy their products.

[loki]

02:07 AM on 01/28/2012

maybe they saw what buying off shore did to US jobs and economy, so they decided not to go that route?

[dungfacerepub]

10:03 PM on 01/27/2012

that's because they have no morals and cheating is a way of life

[tobo]

07:52 AM on 01/28/2012

you're talking about the GOP policy makers, right?

[Janzee12000]

09:15 PM on 01/27/2012

If they did, they'd look at the label and it would probably say, "Made in China"..

[Rich914]

08:46 PM on 01/27/2012

Don't expect the growing affluent class in China to imitate American consumerism, a culturally unique business and commerce dynamic found almost exclusively in North America. Chinese people are quite conscious of their place and know that if they buy a lot of American goods their economy will suffer and their government will take their precious and precarious neophyte middle classness away.

[tobo]

09:39 AM on 01/28/2012

Indeed, I also found it worth noting that European companies are much more succesful in dealing whith the Chinese. Maybe that's because Europeans adapted themselves to the Chinese market, while the Americans expected it to be the other way round?

[dtallwalk]

06:37 PM on 01/27/2012

Kind of hard to live a life with big commie brother watching you and when you get rich the government can take all of what you have made in one swoop so no they are not going to buy a lot they are not wired that way bit big heresy business are to dump to do there home work on a nother country to funnie

[loki]

02:10 AM on 01/28/2012

but if that is the case, why do so many US companies flock there to manufacture goods for the US. you would think that US blue blood companies couldn't work under a Commie regime?
Or is it that Capitalism and Communism have more in common that we have been told to think?

[Karma2U]

06:48 PM on 01/28/2012

Bingo! Both are greedy and harmful to working people.