Ministry Of Commerce: Three Major Difficulties In The Export Of Textiles To The United States

On February 17th, Shen Danyang, a spokesman for the Ministry of Commerce, said at a regular press conference that China's balance of payments is still sound, and that China's economic and domestic markets are basically in good shape and do not exist.

The basis for sustained depreciation.

Therefore, there is no such phenomenon as "increased capital flight".

Shen Danyang said that for all the FTA arrangements conducive to Global trade liberalization and regional economic integration, China is open to the world as long as its principles of openness and pparency are upholding.

This is also true of the the Atlantic agreement on Trade and investment partnership (TTIP).

Focus on TTIP negotiations

Shen Danyang said that so far, the TTIP negotiations have been held for 11 rounds, covering many areas such as market access, services, investment, intellectual property rights and so on. China has been very concerned about this.

"The total economic volume in the US and Europe is nearly US $33 trillion, and the total foreign trade volume is more than US $8 trillion, attracting foreign capital stock of nearly US $11 trillion, with a total population of more than 800 million, which accounts for 47%, 28%, 53% and 12% of the world's total, respectively."

Shen Danyang said that from the perspective of economic scale, once TTIP is completed, it will surpass the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA), the p Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the regional comprehensive economic partnership agreement (RCEP). It will become the largest free trade area in the world, which will have an important impact on global governance, economic and trade pattern evolution, and rules making.

Shen Danyang said that in the first 11 rounds of negotiations, the United States and Europe have discussed in most areas, exchanged second tariff concessions, covered 97% tariff items, and reached a consensus on exchange arrangements for services, investment and government procurement.

However, there are still many differences between the two sides in many areas such as trade in goods, trade in services, investment and regulation consistency.

Turning to the US investment in China, Shen Danyang said that the US investment in China increased to 463.6% in January this year. The reasons for this increase were: first, the base of the same period last year was low, and in January 2016 the US invested 4 billion 717 million yuan in real terms, while in the same period in 2015, the US invested practically 837 million yuan in China, and two, China's further opening up, and some US businesses continued to bullish the Chinese market.

From a growing industry, the increase in investment in China by American enterprises is mainly concentrated in manufacturing, pportation, warehousing, postal services, information software, leasing and business services, scientific research and other fields.

Balance of payments is still sound.

In January this year, inland trade with Hong Kong once again showed an inverse trend.

Shen Danyang said that in January, the mainland's import from Hongkong increased by a significant increase of 108%. The view is that this is a false trade revival triggered by capital flight. But we believe that it is best not to make such a judgement without making serious investigation and analysis, and without data support and case.

Shen Danyang believes that the mainland's substantial increase in imports from Hongkong was mainly due to the low base last year.

The mainland market is very large, and it is still actively expanding imports. Under a low base, a slight increase in imports to Hong Kong, such as the increase in imports of gold and other consumer products, is likely to increase.

Moreover, as far as capital escapes are concerned, it is not always tenable. After all, the data of foreign capital utilization in January are large inflows, showing positive growth.

In addition, the data of the State Administration of foreign exchange also show that China's current balance of payments is still sound, and China's economic and domestic markets are basically in good shape, and there is no basis for the continued depreciation of the renminbi.

As a result, there is no such phenomenon as "a large number of funds have been aggravated".

Recently, China's textile and apparel exports to the United States increased by nearly 7% over the same period in 2015.

For this year's textile export situation, Shen Danyang said that textile and clothing is China's traditional dominant industries. The Ministry of Commerce hopes that textile and clothing exports to the United States will continue to maintain a good growth momentum in 2016, but the difficulties are obvious.

Shen Danyang frankly said that textile exports to the United States are faced with three major difficulties.

First, China's textile industry is constrained by slow economic recovery, weak international market demand and rising domestic factor costs.

There has been a general decline and a slowdown in US export growth.

For example, from the 2015 European and American textile and clothing import situation, EU imports dropped 8.8 percentage points, and the US import growth rate was only 4%.

Two, some industries and orders have been pferred to low cost countries such as Southeast Asia and South Asia, making the textile and garment industry of neighboring countries rising rapidly, which has occupied a part of China's export market to the United States.

Three, the depreciation of currencies in some countries caused the passive appreciation of RMB and weakened the competitiveness of China's products.

Therefore, we must make greater efforts to maintain sustained growth in textile and clothing exports this year.