【英文】美中贸易全国委员会报告：2021美中经济关系报告（28页）

Lower-cost imports from China benefit US businesses and households. In 2019,  the US imported $452 billion worth of goods from China, equivalent to 18% of total goods imports. Concerns have risen over the impact of imported manufactured  goods from China on US manufacturing employment in sectors where those  products compete. However, China has a comparative advantage in the production  of low-cost manufactured goods, and reshoring this production to the US would  lead to a significant increase in US consumer prices and a decrease in household  real incomes. Indeed, econometric studies have found that as a result of imported  goods from China, the US consumer price index was around 2% lower from 2000– 2007 than it otherwise would have been.3 This is due not only to direct imports of  finished consumer products, but also intermediate goods imported from China,  which lower domestic manufacturing costs. 

While the impact of Chinese imports on US manufacturing jobs has also been highly visible given their geographic concentration in the US,4 overall gains to US  real incomes from trade with China have outweighed these losses. Research  suggests the impact of lower prices and increased employment in sectors that benefit from cheaper inputs from China outweighs the impact of reduced  employment in manufacturing sectors competing with Chinese imports.5 Furthermore, research indicates that increased automation is a much larger driver  of the fall in manufacturing employment than the effects of trade with China.  Automation will continue to reduce the demand for low-skilled manufacturing  employment over the coming years, and Oxford Economics estimates as many as  20 million additional manufacturing jobs worldwide could be displaced due to  robotization by 2030.6 Trade restrictions will not help reverse this trend; in fact, as  we show in Section 3 of this report, protectionism has actually hurt the US  manufacturing sector.