Isle trade with China
pegged at over $6 million

Star-Bulletin staff

Hawaii earns more than $6 million a year from exports to China and that makes it important for the state to push for maintaining normal trade relations with that country, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Later this month, Congress is expected to resume discussions about U.S.-China trade relations and will consider what the business association calls the "mislabeled" most-favored-nation treatment of China.

The MFN status allows Chinese goods to enter the United States at lower tariffs than the duties that are applied to some countries but the Chamber of Commerce calls that a normal trade structure. Its argument is that continuing to allow China easy access to U.S. markets will result in continuing access to China by U.S. exporters.

Hawaii should get behind that effort because exports generate jobs, Thomas J. Donohue, the chamber's president and chief executive officer, said in a press release.

Most of the $6.2 million in Hawaii exports to China last year was in one category, $5.3 million worth of refined petroleum products.

But Hawaii's sales to China also included more than $500,000 worth of food products, $110,000 worth of lumber and wood products, agricultural products worth $70,000 and $42,000 worth of scientific and measuring instruments.