Thus, in some ways, a stronger yuan might not only allow Chinese to continue selling their exports to Americans, but have a muted effect on the US' relatively modest exports to China. These totaled US$25.06 billion in the first 11 months of last year, compared with US$114.19 billion in imports from China.
The US is strongest in exports to China of food, notably soybeans, and infrastructure equipment, like the big turbines that General Electric ships and the powerful digging equipment Caterpillar sells.
Limited ability to compete
US equipment makers do not compete directly with Chinese manufacturers in many products. The Chinese companies either do not produce the equipment at all or they produce equipment that is much inferior in quality. That limits the potential for the US to take advantage of a higher yuan to sell more products and take market share from the Chinese companies.
At the same time, China's demand is growing more slowly for food than for many other kinds of products. Although the Chinese are eating more meat, which requires more tons of animal feed than importing food for direct consumption, overall increases remain modest.
A revaluation of the yuan, said Phil Laney, China director in Beijing for the American Soybean Association, "could mean feed millers increase the amount of soybeans they mix in their feed, but it's not going to make a big difference in demand."
Merle Hinrichs, chief executive of Global Sources, an online intermediary and catalog company for 140,000 overseas suppliers to the US market, the majority in China, said the company's surveys of consumer-goods industries had found no sign that anything short of a very large revaluation would make much difference.
"It has more of a perception impact than an actual impact," he said. "It's not going to impact the actual trade a lot."
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