Watts Dean typifies the American holiday consumer, buying goods that are made-in-wherever. And the ubiquity of such indifference in the States during an especially active shopping season is helping China’s exports to the US hold steady despite years of political and trade frictions.
As China looks to shore up economy, geopolitics, US rate cuts weigh on outlook
Meanwhile, Chinese exporters are so often using third countries, such as Mexico and Vietnam, to ship goods to the US that it can be hard for consumers to know where an item really originated.
“In fact, the trouble with gauging whether American consumers are buying a lot more from places such as Southeast Asia and Mexico is that it’s hard to tell how much of that is, in reality, Chinese goods,” said Christopher Beddor, deputy director for China research at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Any way you slice the data, China is still a…
