How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China

Yuqing Xing and Neal Detert

No 257, ADBI Working Papers from Asian Development Bank Institute

Abstract: In this paper, the authors use the iPhone as a case to show that even high-tech products invented by United States (US) companies will not increase US exports, but on the contrary exacerbate the US trade deficit. The iPhone contributed US$1.8 billion to the US trade deficit with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Unprecedented globalization, well organized global production networks, repaid development of cross-country production fragmentation, and low transportation costs all contributed to rational firms such as Apple making business decisions that contributed directly to the US trade deficit reduction. Global production networks and highly specialized production processes apparently reverse trade patterns: developing countries such as the PRC export high-tech goods—like the iPhone—while industrialized countries such as the US import the high-tech goods they themselves invented. In addition, conventional trade statistics greatly inflate bilateral trade deficits between a country used as export-platform by multinational firms and its destination countries.

Keywords: sino-us trade; apple iphone; world trade patterns (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 12 pages
Date: 2010-12-14
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (95)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.adbi.org/files/2010.12.14.wp257.iphone. ... rade.deficit.prc.pdf Full text (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden (http://www.adbi.org/files/2010.12.14.wp257.iphone.widens.us.trade.deficit.prc.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.adbi.org/files/2010.12.14.wp257.iphone.widens.us.trade.deficit.prc.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://www.adb.org/adbi/files/2010.12.14.wp257.iphone.widens.us.trade.deficit.prc.pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0257

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ADBI Working Papers from Asian Development Bank Institute Kasumigaseki Building 8F, 3-2-5, Kasumigaseki, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 100-6008, Japan. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ADB Institute ().