Memo to Trump: China is Already Bigger Than the United States

by DEAN BAKER

As we know, Donald Trump is not very good with numbers. He gave more evidence of this fact when he told a campaign rally in West Virginia:

“When I came, we were heading in a certain direction that was going to allow China to be bigger than us in a very short period of time …That’s not going to happen anymore.”

Actually, China’s economy is already considerably bigger than the U.S economy. Using the purchasing power parity measure, which is recommended by most economists and the CIA World Factbook, China’s economy is already more than 25 percent larger than the U.S. economy. It is also worth noting that there are no growth projections from any remotely reputable source that show the U.S. economy growing more rapidly than China’s economy.

This column originally appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. 

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/24/memo-to-trump-china-is-already-bigger-than-the-united-states/