China Creates A Global Economic Shock

The first China shock came after a series of liberalizing reforms in China in the 1990s and its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. For U.S. consumers, this brought considerable benefits. One 2019 paper found that consumer prices in the U.S. for goods fell 2% for every extra percentage point of market share grabbed by Chinese imports, with the biggest benefits felt by people on low and middle incomes.

But the China shock also piled pressure on domestic manufacturers. In 2016, Autor and other economists estimated that the U.S. lost more than two million jobs between 1999 and 2011 as a result of Chinese imports, as makers of furniture, toys and clothes buckled under the competition and workers in hollowed-out communities struggled to find new roles.

A sequel of sorts appears to be under way.

China’s economy expanded 5.2% last year, a subdued rate by its standards, and is expected to slow further as a drawn-out real-estate crunch crushes investment and consumers rein in spending. Capital Economics, a consulting firm, thinks annual growth will slow to around 2% by 2030. Beijing is seeking to engineer an economic turnaround by plowing money into factories, especially for semiconductors, aerospace, cars and renewable-energy equipment, and selling the resulting surplus abroad.

Protectionism might shift some of the deflationary impact to other parts of the world, as Chinese exporters look for new markets in poorer countries. Those economies could see their own fledgling industries shrivel in the teeth of Chinese competition, much as the U.S. did in an earlier era.