The Chinese are already buying luxury German cars with might and main, European production is resuming, and only the prospects for the United States remain invariably dim as the authorities cannot curb the coronavirus.
This is stated in the material of the agency “Associated Press”.
The AP calls the US government’s response to the pandemic incompetent, and the sabotage of government support that is so necessary for the Americans “calls into question their economic prospects”. Between April and June, the US economy collapsed 32.9% year on year. This is the worst indicator on record. Experts hope that the situation will change for the better in the second half of the year, but the US economy will still be far from the pre-pandemic level.
The situation in China now looks exactly the opposite. It became the first major economy to resume growth after the pandemic. During the same period from April to June, it grew by 3.2% over the previous quarter.
Although the US still accounts for 22% of the global economy, which is 8 percentage points higher than the PRC, the US is no longer influencing global growth as it used to. It’s not just the response to the coronavirus – the US’s very role in the global economy has dwindled.
The Chinese economy has consistently grown faster than the American economy, rapidly closing the gap. From 2009 to 2019, China accounted for nearly 28% of global economic growth, while the United States accounted for just 17%. Such tendencies play against the United States.
For example, German automakers are seeing their products in demand in China. BMW vehicle sales there grew 17% in the second quarter of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Daimler, which controls the production of Mercedes cars, earned 15% more money in China over the same period than a year earlier. At the same time in the United States, sales fell by 36%.
As economist Philip Hauber of the Keele Institute for World Economics notes, while US influence still matters, “in fact, China has been the engine of the global economy in recent years”. Moreover, the trade war unleashed by Donald Trump only pushed China to seek new markets, pushing other countries out of them.