The thinking is that plunging export sales might create pressure for a change in foreign policy.
Even in a world like that, though, sooner or later the very development it brings about will put upward pressure on export prices.
If lower capital spending and pressure on the export sector reduce overall employment growth, that will quickly dampen income and hence spending.
The effect of earlier unilateral interventions have so far proven to be short lived, but politicians are under pressure to support the export sector as the country seeks to build momentum after its second recession in three years.
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According to a survey by the CBI, a business pressure-group, manufacturing export orders were up in the three months to January, and companies are more optimistic about prospects for the coming year than at any time since 1995.
Some will argue that the United States must accommodate its allies, dispensing with bits and pieces of the COCOM list or proscribed destinations to stave off pressure to dismantle the entire multilateral export control regime.
If China can heal some of those rifts with a greater focus on rescuing those left behind by the new prosperity, this may in turn take some of the pressure off the government to subsidise export workers through currency management.
But if passed, they believe it will put pressure on countries involved in the export or transfer of arms to scrutinise more rigorously both the potential use of weapons and what the consequences of their use might be, such as breaches of human rights.
So at the margin, China's rocketing export growth will continue to exert a significant downward pressure on global corporate prices and margins.
So too will pressure on Russia to tighten the loopholes in its export controls that have repeatedly allowed missile and related technologies to slip through the net.
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It is also the surest way to deflect protectionist pressure, because the prospect of greater access to foreign markets should rally export lobbies to the free-trade cause.
In its latest earnings, rivals UPS missed top and bottom-line estimates, while highlighting that uncertainty in the U.S., export weakness in Asia, and the European sovereign debt crisis would continue to put downward pressure on earnings, as my colleague Steve Schaefer reported.
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