The United States Department of Commerce has approved about 70% of all license applications requested to sell products and chips to Chinese companies. The information was confirmed by Alan Estevez, undersecretary of Commerce and Industry of the USA.
According to Estevez, as much as countries are in a trade war, only 30.1% of license requests were rejected or returned without action during the entire year of 2022.
Despite this, he added that export license applications for Chinese companies come to the department without priority. Thus, the normal period is 40 days, but for matters related to China, this mark rises to around 77 days.
Finally, Estevez must appear at a hearing in the US House where he must try to reassure congressmen about a possible increase in the influence of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
However, as hard as the Commerce Department works to enforce decisions that have been piling up since the Trump administration, trade between China and the United States has never been better.
According to figures released this week, imports and exports grew by 2.5% in 2022, setting a new record of US$ 690 billion in trade transactions between the two countries.
The US trade deficit with China also widened to $382.9 billion, reaching 8.3%. In 2022, China was the US’s third largest trading partner after Canada and Mexico and the largest source of imports for the country.
The data makes it clear that the US and Chinese economies are heavily dependent on each other, despite the ongoing technology war. This is also evidence that it will take a long time for countries to “cut ties”.