How do you distinguish foreign investment from trade?

Question

Many of my purchases are shipped directly from China without an association between the purchase and payment. How can anyone know how much trade is taking place without the association or in cases where the funds are kept in US based banks? My purchases do not go through US customs but through US post office in China and the declared value is quite small.

simplicitus · Accepted Answer

But all the money goes through the state bank:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banking_in_the_People's_Republic_of_China
so they know exactly who is receiving money and how much. And they can get all the data they want from the Chinese companies receiving the money.

Also, you as an individual just can't legally invest in China except through the Chinese government.

And, I'd guess that your purchases are of such a small scale, that they are in the noise anyway - so small that it wouldn't matter if no one kept track of them at all.

So your example of China is a really bad one.

On the other hand, you probably could invest $10,000 in Canada and you might well have people wondering whether it was investment or purchase.

Of course, with the international drug business being the size that it is and governments not being able to determine exactly how big that is, again, your investment would probably be too small to care about.

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How do you distinguish foreign investment from trade?

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