I'm reading a book for work called U.S.-China Trade issues and Patterns (2013). It appears that these are a series that come out about every 2 years or so. I found the overview interesting in that trade with China isn't exactly just balck & white but it has a lot of stuff mixed together (somethings bad for Americans, somethings good). This data is for the decade 2001-2011.
U.S. exports to China have grown nearly 5x in value over that decade but are "dwarfed by the surge of Chinese imports" thus resulting in a growing bilateral trade deficit.
Most of the U.S. exports to China are of non-manufactured goods (ag products-escpecailly soybeans) and more recently metal ores and other minerals, coal, and petroleum gases. Leading U.S. manufactured goods to China were motor vehicles, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, and aircraft.
China is the leading importer of U.S. "cast-offs" such as scrap metal, waster paper, etc. U.S. exports of iron and steel waste & scrap between 2005 and 2001 increased from $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion. China also makes raw steel from imported western Austrailan iron ore.
A dramatic rise in imports of Chinese made manufactured goods to the U.S. and "significant decrease" in U.S. manufactured goods to China.
"A steady move up the value chain for Chinese imports" esepcially computers and consumer electronics.
So, I guess whether we like it or not, we're probably economically tied to them for most cases for a long time coming...
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