Trade Data

Trade in China's GDP

When accounting for the GDP by expenditure, trade is the NET EXPORT of both GOODS and SERVICES. For the U.S., trade actually has a  negative 5% effect in 2019 (no wonder Trump wanted to increase GDP by returning to Mercantilism). 

In China's data, the composition of NET EXPORT is a bit blurry. Data on goods are reported by the customer and could be verified by microdata. Data on service are reported by the Ministry of Commerce but there is no microdata. Worse still, the export of goods and services doesn't add up as the trade in GDP account (graph on left)！

Fortunately, differences are only severe between 2007 and 2014.  During these years, the net exported goods are smaller than the net export. So if we assume the data on goods export are accurate, it is either the exported service is positive (which is unlikely) or the GDP is over-estimated (or adjusted by some unknown procedures).

In other years, differences are so smaller. However, it is still annoying that they don't add up. After all, GDP is a simple equation.

See Trade in GDP for all data and technical details. As the exported service is reported in US dollars, I calculated average exchange rates with data on exported goods which are reported both in RMB and US dollars. I then use these exchange rates to calculate exported services in RMB and then add them up with exported goods in RMB to get the net export.