Current Position: Home > IP News > Is China US trade surplus overvalued? "Factor income trade"

On November 16, the world trade organization, the Asian Development Bank, Japan's Asian Economic Research Institute and other institutions jointly released the global value chain development report 2021: beyond production. After introducing the conceptual framework of "factor income trade", the report found that if the "missing value" related to trade in intellectual property services is taken into account, the scale of global value chain may be twice that of the usual report.

What is the trend and significance behind the use of the concept of "factor income trade"? What impact does it have on the current global value chain? In this regard, the people's network reporter interviewed Cui Weijie, vice president of the Research Institute of the Ministry of Commerce.

According to the relevant instructions of the report, "factor income trade" includes intangible assets such as patents, trademarks, copyrights, brands, designs, software and databases. Cui Weijie said that the concept of "factor income trade" brings intangible assets and service exports into trade statistics, provides a more objective and comprehensive cognitive way for the global value chain, and makes up for the "lack" of traditional trade data. For example, traditional trade data largely underestimate the real exports of developed countries and distort the trade balance between developed and developing countries.

For example, according to the calculation of "factor income trade", the trade surplus between China and the United States is about 1 / 3 lower than that calculated by the traditional total trade statistics system, and 17.4% lower than the valuation under the value-added trade statistics framework.

Cui Weijie said that this means that the export income of the United States is greatly underestimated, which is not conducive to objectively reflecting the changes in the pattern of benefit distribution brought about by globalization. If calculated according to the framework of "factor income trade", China US trade will become more balanced, more objectively reflect the current situation of China US trade, and better reflect that the United States is still the biggest beneficiary of globalization, rather than taking the road of trade protectionism and anti globalization.

Currently, the novel coronavirus pneumonia has caused the revolutionary changes in the global value chain to international trade, industrialization and economic development. These industrial chains are changing as more and more enterprises shift from traditional production processes to services and other intangible assets.

Cui Weijie believes that the use of the concept of "factor income trade" in the report intuitively reflects the important role of "factory free manufacturers" in the global value chain, and its essence is that the content of international trade is undergoing fundamental changes, and the proportion of services in the global value chain is becoming higher and higher, which is also the deep integration of manufacturing and service industries The inevitable result of the deep integration of trade in goods and trade in services.

"Factor income trade can help people more objectively and accurately understand the benefits of globalization to countries, deepen their understanding of where value is created and how it is shared, is of great significance to revitalizing the value chain, especially to increase the opportunities for low-income economies and small and medium-sized enterprises to participate in the global economy, and help promote more inclusive globalization." Cui Weijie said.

In addition, the report also discusses the "beyond production" aspects of several global value chains, that is, the role of global value chain participation in promoting productivity growth and improving innovation performance; How service value chains expand the benefits of developing countries' participation in global value chains, and how service led growth provides new ways for development; The potential of digital platforms in promoting more inclusive globalization by promoting the participation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in global value chains; Risk issues of global value chain (including three main risks: environment, geopolitics and new crown pandemic).



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