国内英语资讯:Spotlight: Why U.S. excuses for punishing China with tariffs untenable_时事

国内英语资讯:Spotlight: Why U.S. excuses for punishing China with tariffs untenable

If a lack of intra-administration communication was not the reason for the obvious discrepancy between Trump and administration officials' assertions, then it seems we can rightly assume that the proposed tally of tariffs was nothing but to add the math up.

BIASED ALGORITHMS IN DETERMINING DEFICIT

Now come the algorithms. The United States calculates trade deficits and surpluses based on where a product is finished instead of on value added, a method that renders its unilaterally-concluded China deficit number unconvincing.

In an opinion piece published on April 2 on the Foreign Affairs magazine's website, Philip Levy wrote: "Since China is the latest stage in the (global value) chain, a finished product can appear to have come from China, even if Chinese value-added is relatively small."

Levy, who tried in his article to justify U.S. acceptance of China's accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 as one and the only right decision, pinpointed the exact symptom of Washington's ill-devised calculations.

Indeed, a lot of products with the "made in China" labels oftentimes turn out to be assembled in China using imported parts.

Take Apple's electronic devices for example. According to statistics dating back as early as 2010, 58.5 percent of iPhone's profits went to the Apple company, whereas China's labor cost only constituted 1.8 percent of inputs.

While profits gained by Apple from the iPad slipped to 30 percent in the same year, the percentage of China's labor cost stood at 2 percent, pretty much the same as that of the iPhone and still in stark contrast with Apple's gains.