ClaimsPeter Thiel

“There's sort of a way in which the two economies are very deeply connected.”

Peter Thiel, investor, interviewee 7 February 2020 The World According to Thiel (Hoover Institution)

Factual Economics and markets

The US and Chinese economies are very deeply connected.

Mostly true True in substance, wrong in a detail.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.

What would count as true or false

Judge as of 2020-02-07. True: data from around 2019–2020 show very deep US–China economic links, e.g. bilateral goods trade of roughly $500 billion or more a year, heavy supply-chain dependence, large Chinese holdings of US Treasuries and large cross-investment, with each country among the other's top trading partners. Mostly true: the links are substantial and deep on most measures, but some measures (e.g. falling trade during the tariff war, limited financial integration) qualify 'very deeply'. Mixed: the evidence is evenly split between deep integration and significant decoupling. Mostly false: the economies are linked but only modestly relative to their size, so 'very deeply' is a clear overstatement. False: the data show economic links between them are minor.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 International Trade US Census Bureau

    “TOTAL 2019 | 106,481.2 | 449,110.7 | -342,629.5 |”
  2. E2 United States Trade Summary World Bank WITS (UN Comtrade and WDI data)

    “- United States imports from China worth US$ 472,465 million, with a partner share of 18.40 percent.”
  3. E3 United States Trade Summary World Bank WITS (UN Comtrade and WDI data)

    “- United States exports to China worth US$ 106,627 million, with a partner share of 6.48 percent.”
  4. E4 International Trade US Census Bureau

    “TOTAL 2018 | 120,281.2 | 538,514.2 | -418,232.9 |”

Reasoning

World Bank WITS data for 2019 show US imports from China of about $472.5 billion, an 18.40% share of US imports, and US exports to China of about $106.6 billion, a 6.48% share (E2, E3). Together that is well over the $500 billion trade threshold in the criteria, and the Census China trade table gives a similar 2019 total of about $555.6 billion (E1). However, the Census rows show trade falling sharply from 2018 (about $120.3 billion in exports and $538.5 billion in imports) to 2019 (E4, E1). The criteria name falling trade during the tariff war as a qualifier, and none of the evidence covers Treasury holdings, cross-investment or supply-chain dependence. The links are deep on the trade measures available, so the claim is mostly true rather than fully true.

Cite this claim

Peter Thiel, “The US and Chinese economies are very deeply connected.” (said 7 February 2020). Verdict: mostly true. Reliability API, claim c_9f523d49dee3, method 0.1.0+3e03e2df, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_9f523d49dee3

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

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All of them

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