Translated from Spanish by Daniel Contreras<\/p>\n
On September 25, President Obama and President Xi gave a joint press conference in front of the White House. Obama was the first to speak. After welcoming Xi Jinping and referring to how much both have worked to increase cooperation between the United States and China, he said, \u201cSince I took office, American exports to China have nearly doubled and now support nearly one million American jobs.\u201d Clearly, Obama was pointing out what he considered to be one of the achievements of his administration, but a look at the numbers tells a different story. In 2009 US exports to China were $69 billion, in 2014 this number grew to $123 billion. However, Chinese imports in 2009 totaled $269 billion and in 2014, $466 billion.<\/p>\n
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Graph 1. Source: https:\/\/www.census.gov\/foreign-trade\/balance\/c5700.html<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A trade deficit (or surplus) does not necessarily reflect the health of an economy, in fact the United States has had a trade deficit with China since 1985, but it does remind us how numbers can be presented in a ways that fail to show what they actually mean.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n![\"Balance](\"https:\/\/trends.ufm.edu\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Balance-of-trade-USA-to-China-28092015.png\")
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![\"Balance](\"https:\/\/trends.ufm.edu\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Balance-of-trade-China-USA-28092015.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"yoY](\"https:\/\/trends.ufm.edu\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/yoY-imports-and-exports-28092015.png\")
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