Covid-19 and Internation Trade

China's imports and exports improved in March on the back of better-than-expected industrial output recovery and sustained efforts to stabilize the global supply chain, the Ministry of Commerce said on Thursday. Work resumption progress of the foreign trade companies has proceeded in an orderly manner with the production capacity recovery rate exceeding 70 percent in 76 percent of the key Chinese exporters, data from the ministry showed. In March, the subindexes of the official manufacturing purchasing managers' index that gauges new export orders and imports rose to 46.4 and 48.4, respectively, from 28.7 and 31.9 in February. China's imports and exports are set to show further improvement in March, based on information collected from local governments and various industries, said Gao Feng, spokesperson for the ministry. The General Administration of Customs is, however, yet to release the official foreign trade data for the first quarter of this year. Gao, howev...

Jobless claims exceed 20 million in four weeks, inflicting a toll on the labor force not seen since the Great Depression. Even as political leaders wrangle over how and when to restart the American economy, the coronavirus pandemic’s devastation became more evident Thursday with more than 5.2 million workers added to the tally of the unemployed. In the last four weeks, the number of unemployment claims has reached 22 million — roughly the net number of jobs created in a nine-and-a-half-year stretch that began after the last recession and ended with the pandemic’s arrival. The latest figure from the Labor Department, reflecting last week’s initial claims, underscores how the downdraft has spread to every corner of the economy. “There’s nowhere to hide,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton in Chicago. “This is the deepest, fastest, most broad-based recession we’ve ever seen.” We are a foreign trade factory in China, mainly producing various wedge wire fil...