australia is decoupled from the united states

Listen to what David Hale has to say to Tony Jones on Lateline.

Its also interesting to note that only 2% of China's GDP is exports to America.

Part of the transcript below.....


"DAVID HALE: Australia's decouple because you only have $8 billion of exports to the United States, you have $10 billion to India, so America's a very minor market for you but what matters is not America, what matters is Asia. Your big markets are China, Japan and Korea and I believe they can decouple. Let's look at China. 40 per cent of GDP is export, 20 per cent of that goes to America. That looks very high risk. But only 20 per cent of the value out of Chinese experts accrues to Chinese companies. 80 per cent goes to countries elsewhere in Asia that supply China with intermediate goods and components to produce finished goods for American and for Europe. The exports in China depend very heavily on imports from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia. So the reality is only two per cent of China's GDP depends on America. Look at Malaysia. Foreign trade is 180 per cent of GDP. America's half of that, or a quarter of that. Malaysia's the most vulnerable country in the world for American recession after Canada and Mexico. Last year exports to America fell 15 per cent, Malaysian GDP growth was over six per cent. Why? Strong domestic consumption and robust infrastructure spending. East Asia is independent from America now because east Asia has $3.6 trillion of foreign exchange reserves and has massive current account surpluses. If East Asia wants to go for domestic thread growth they can easily do it through infrastructure, through tax cuts through public spending. That's happening in Malaysia, it will happen elsewhere in the region the next 12 months."

SOURCE: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2007/s2179957.htm