This paper aims to reduce the range within which the true U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit lies, and identify the determinants of the bilateral trade deficit. We take advantage of detailed Chinese Customs data at the commodity level. Our calculated U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit is $15...

This paper has two aims. The first is to reduce the range within which the true U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit lies. The second is to identify the determinants of the bilateral trade deficit and offer an assessment of their relative importance. We calculate a smaller range of values for the...