South SFV Today

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) took part in a House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hearing on the Biden Administration's People's Republic of China (PRC) Strategy according to a tweet published by the Committee on Friday.

“If you look at the top 15 steel companies in the world, the United States doesn’t have a single one," Khanna said during the hearing. "Nine of them are in China.”

"For 40 years, we've hollowed out our industrial base & allowed China to join the WTO leading to massive trade deficits," Khanna wrote in a separate tweet published on Thursday. "We just watched as steel & aluminum left. I asked the witnesses at today’s @committeeonccp hearing for a commitment to lower the trade deficit."

During the hearing, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) asked Thea D. Rozman Kendler, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration, a series of questions about the United States' billion-dollar deficit with the PRC.

"While struggling today, China's economy is estimated by Goldman Sachs to possibly overtake the United States in the next ten years," Luetkemeyer said. "Most notably, in 2022, the U.S. had a 382 billion dollar trade deficit with China. In 1990, one year before the collapse, the U.S. had a trade surplus of over 2 billion dollars with the USSR right before their collapse. Would the CCP be able to afford their military operations, build detention camps, subsidize their industries against ours, if they had a trade deficit with the U.S. instead of a surplus of 382 billion dollars?"

CNBC reported that China's trade surplus increased from $88.2 billion in March to $90.21 billion in April. Additionally, according to the U.S. Library of Congress, China exported $380 billion more in goods and services to the U.S. in 2018 than it imported during that time, resulting in a $419 billion deficit.

According to Reuters, China is currently expected to export the most steel in 2023 since 2016, with 2023 exports set to surpass 2022's total of 67.32 million metric tons shipped. Analysts believe that the country will ship up to 77 million metric tons of steel through 2023. The increase is largely due to high steel demand from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Reuters also reported that China produces over 60% of the world's steel and 57% of aluminum.