Turning One’s Loss Into a Win?

This article aims to shed light on the hidden benefits and losses of U.S.-China trade within the framework of unequal exchange theory. After presenting the evolutions of the trade balance between China and the U.S., we propose two methods for measuring the unequal exchange between them: one considers the labor content directly incorporated into the exchange; the other focuses on the international values with input-output tables. This allows to present a synthesis of sectoral analyses. Our results show a significant unequal exchange in U.S.-China trade over 1995–2014, the U.S. being actually the main beneficiary of this trade. Both methods exhibit the inequality in exchange tending to decrease over time; China's disadvantage has been gradually reducing from the 2000s. We finally suggest that the relative decline in the hegemonic status of the U.S. in this bilateral unequal relationship could help explain its decision to launch its trade war with China.