Implications of "Made in China"

While doing some research for my internship, I came across this study that was published last week. It's not really relevant to my project but I think it's probably worth reading for people interested in global supply chains.

There are two surprising findings - first, Chinese imports account for less than 2% of all US consumer spending. That's a much lower number than I (and probably most people) would have guessed. Second, more than half (55%) of US spending on products labeled "Made in China" actually goes back to US companies. The authors claim that this suggests that the effect of domestic inflation in China should be negligible in the US. Seems to make sense to me.

I think there are a lot of ways to look at this data, but my key takeaways are -

1. For all the talk about globalization and in particular our dependence on China, the US is more of a closed, self-sufficient economy than most people think (granted, the 2% figure is slightly misleading because it includes spending on services, the vast majority of which are produced in the US of course).

2. Understanding global supply chains and where different companies add value is so much more complicated than it seems.