https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/us-trade-deficit-communist-china-climbing-terence-p-jeffrey/
At the White House press briefing last Dec. 6, press secretary Jen Psaki made it clear that President Joe Biden wanted the People’s Republic of China to pay a price for its human rights abuses.
He would do so by declining to send any U.S. government officials to the Beijing Winter Olympics, which would be held in February.
“The Biden administration,” Psaki said, “will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang,” she said. “And we simply can’t do that.”
But business as usual with the PRC did continue in the business arena, if not the Olympic one.
In fact, in the days leading up to and through the Beijing Olympics, U.S. imports from China increased.
In January 2021, according to the Census Bureau, the United States imported $39,111,200,000 in goods from the PRC, while exporting only $12,860,900,000. The result was a bilateral monthly trade deficit of $26,250,200,000.