Bilateral trade volume = (one country’s) export volume + (one country’s) import volume. Export volume refers to the total value of goods exported from domestic to foreign countries by a country within a certain period. Import volume refers to a certain The total value of a country's imports of goods from abroad into the country during the period. The so-called "bilateral trade" refers to trade between two countries or regions. As for goods, technology or service trade, there are three types of trade. If there are more than two traders, it is called multilateral trade. "Bilateral trade volume" refers to the total trade volume between two countries or regions. Generally, the closer the distance, the more frequent trade between countries and the greater the trade volume. The larger the country, the greater the trade volume. China's settlement statistics are based on the FOB price of Chinese ports, while the United States' settlement statistics are based on the CIF price. There is a difference in marine insurance premiums. Therefore, there is always a difference between the China-US trade surplus announced by China and the US-China trade deficit announced by the United States every year.

Bilateral trade

Bilateral trade refers to the trade between two countries that maintains a balance of import and export balances with each other. Bilateral trade must be signed by the two governments and is conducted on the basis of bilateral settlement. In this kind of trade, each party pays for its imports from the other country with its own country's exports, instead of paying for the other country's exports for its imports from a third country. The import and export volumes of both sides should be basically balanced. Since the value of goods and services exchanged by importers and exporters is basically balanced, payment difficulties are solved or reduced and the development of international trade is promoted. Later, as countries gradually relaxed foreign exchange controls and multilateral settlement expanded, the proportion of bilateral trade gradually declined.

The direct measure of liberalization is the reduction of tariffs, non-tariff measures and other trade restrictions. However, since there is often a huge difference between nominal tariffs and actual tariffs in developing countries, and there are difficulties in quantifying non-tariff barrier measures and data collection, many economists use the results of trade liberalization to approximately represent the degree of trade liberalization. . Around the turn of the century, in order to cope with the challenges of the new situation, the United States, Japan, China and other countries timely revised their free trade strategies and increased the intensity of free trade agreement negotiations, shifting from the original emphasis on "multilateral" to "bilateral" "negotiations, or both "multilateral" and "bilateral".