This question was inspired by this thread about the efficiency of shipping via rail vs. truck.
Speaking in terms of cubic volume, we import huge amounts of goods from China. Apparently far more than they import from us. But some stuff has to be going back there, right? What are we sending back to them?
I read somewhere that we send large amounts of paper for recycling to China. Given that so much of what they send us comes in corrugated packaging, this seems to make sense. Anyone know if this is true?
Wood. Lotsa wood. China is the biggest market for hardwoods from the U.S.
Also: industrial supplies, foods, feeds and beverages, and automobiles and automotive parts.
China just recently passed the U.S. as the world’s second largest exporter. Got that? Until March, 2008 the U.S.A exported more goods around the world than China. :eek:
Australia ships a buttload of stuff like coal and iron ore to China. In fact, China is the main reason we are weathering the current economic storm as well as we are.
Good to hear that we’re sending them something other than air. One joke that I’d heard before was that we sent them empty cargo containers to be refilled.
Answers like “money” and “financial services” don’t apply here. Perhaps I should have made it clearer that I was looking for things that actually take up space on cargo ships.
I’m definitely not asking about finished goods. I’m asking about any “goods.”
That’s interesting, because a lot of cheap hardwood flooring comes out of China. And I’m not talking about woods that might be grown here and processed there (I don’t know if there even is any) because Canadian or American origin is a selling point. Of course, there are a limited number of species that are suitable for flooring, so who knows?
Not any more. We need all the empty cargo containers we can get. I work at a freight forwarder, and many carriers will not even take export bookings now because they are either fully booked and overbooked for over 6 weeks and/or they have no empty containers available. Inland depots have been in severe deficit for months. If you are any distance at all from the coasts, or are in Texas, you can pretty much forget about shipping anything unless you are willing to pay a small fortune to have an empty container trucked in from the port.
LD-6 ISO containers full of American $100 bills. Boy are they going to be surprised when we shift our monetary system over to flattened cans of Miller Light.
You may be referring to this article, which confirms that we export a large volume of scrap materials (not just paper, but also ferous scrap, aluminum and plastics) to China.