China Doubles Down on Exports: Over the past year, China achieved a major economic milestone, becoming the first country to post a $1 trillion trade surplus. However, contrary to what one might at first glance believe, this should not be any cause for celebration. China’s massive trade surplus instead reflect two major underlying current weaknesses in its economy. One is the decreasing inflows of foreign investment, which has played a crucial role in the rapid growth of the Chinese economy over the past three decades. The trade surplus also underscores ongoing anemic consumption in China and the unbalanced and unsustainable natures of its current economic growth model. While China has consistently run large trade surpluses ever since becoming the workshop of the world during the 1990s, these surpluses have spiked over the past seven years. In 2018, the gap between what China exported and imported was under $500 billion. It reached $500 ...