US exports to China revealing

But in their pursuit of the answer, one of the lads came across this useful US government site, which shows US trade balances by country.

The officials at the INQ were attempting to discover the figures for Red China - and sure enough they're up on the .gov site.

The figures for Red China, show a negative balance in the first five months of this year of $30,480.5 million. For the same five months last year, the figure was slightly less, amounting for the whole year to -$83,833.1 million.

What is the US importing from China? That's broken down on this page, and the answer is "miscellaneous manufactured articles", followed closely by machinery and transport equipment.

Those figures can be contrasted with Taiwan, which despite its diminutive size, accounted for a negative balance of $6,074.80 million in the first five months of 2001, and Blighty, or Limeyland, which showed a positive balance of $44.70 millions for the first five months. We must be eating more burgers or something.

Taiwan's number one export to the USA this year is machinery and transport equipment, while miscellaneous manufactured articles comes a poor second. Limeyland also scores high in this category.

Afghanistan showed a miserable but nevertheless positive $.70 million balance for the same period - what does the US export to Afghanistan these days?

There's a useful summary of US trade in May 2001, the last period for which figures were produced, on this this page. But the really intriguing country in the list is the People's Republic of Advanced Technology. Here, the US managed a positive $7,160.10 millions from January to May this year - a big increase compared to the whole of 2000.

Perhaps a reader will tell us where the Advanced Technology country is. And what does its flag look like, we wonder... µ