During President-elect Donald Trump's “thank you” tour in Iowa on Thursday, he continued his criticism of China.

"The Nation of China is responsible for almost half of America's trade deficit. China is not a market economy," said Trump.

Those comments and similar ones have alarmed economics professor Peter Summers.

"For example, he has said he wants to punish China for keeping the price of their currency too low, and they actually haven't been doing that for several years," Summers said.

He thinks punishing China is a threat and not an action.

"There's great deal of bilateral trade between our two countries,” Summers said. “Trade is very important to China as well as for the United States."

One of the largest trade items is furniture.

"About 80 percent of all the wood furniture that is sold in the United State is made outside of the U.S., the majority of it coming from Asia," said furniture analyst Jerry Epperson.

Epperson says comments by Trump might not affect the revenue that the High Point Furniture Market brings to North Carolina.

"People have to be there because retailers can't sell from an empty store and the factories have to have retailers or they can't make their product," Epperson explains about the countries' furniture relationship, meaning the two countries can't completely cut ties from one another.

"It's certainly not in the U.S.'s interest to sever trade times with China either,” Summers said. “Yes, we buy a lot of good from them, we also sell a lot of goods to them."

Summers still has a lot of reservations about Trump's handling of China as we get closer to Inauguration Day, Jan. 20. But Summers says the appointment of Iowa Gov. Terry Branstand as ambassador to China is a sign of good will.

"The relationship between Iowa and other Midwestern states selling agriculture products to China, that's been a very important relationship," Summers said.

He says he will be watching closely who Trump announces as secretary of state and United States' trade representative. Summers says that will be very telling how he will govern overseas.

(Source: twcnews.com  Author: Rilwan Balogun)