China, widely dismissed as a head-to-head economic competitor to America in advanced manufactured goods, has been seizing significant and often rapidly rising shares of the U.S. market for dozens of these high value products from American-based producers for more than a decade, according to a new study by the U.S. Business and Industry Council (USBIC).
China's industrial prowess is now beginning to threaten those domestic industrial sectors that Americans have long relied on to create premium-wage jobs and technological innovation, and to undergird national security, the group explains. Expanding these industries is also a key to any sustainable U.S. economic recovery, the council notes.
USBIC's data show that from 1997-2008 (the last year for which U.S. government data is available), China's share of advanced U.S. manufactures markets surged from 0.59% to 5.44%. This rate of expansion was more than 12 times faster than the total foreign share during this period.
Moreover, Chinese products' market share in America's own industrial backyard is much higher for many individual industries. For example, in 2008 imports from Chinese-made products alone accounted for 33.2% of all of the computers Americans consumed, 22% of the broadcast and wireless communications equipment, 12.7% of the tires, 12.1% of the industrial valves, 9.9% of the motors and generators, 7.9% of the relays and industrial controls, and 6.1% of the environmental controls.
The USBIC report also shows that China's inroads in these critical industrial and technological sectors expanded much faster after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization than before.
Indeed, after China's WTO admission, its share of 86 of the 115 advanced U.S. manufactures markets studied increased at a faster rate than during the 1997-2003 period. For 69 of these sectors, China's share of U.S. market increased at least twice the 1997-2003 rate.
For more information about the report visit
http://images.magnetmail.net/images/clients/USBIC/attach/USBICChinaImportPenetrationReport2010.pdf
