Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Michael Pettis Profile picture
@michaelxpettis
Aug 19, 2019 • 6 tweets • 2 min read • Read on X
Yes, agrees. Ironically democracy seems historically to be “in crisis” precisely when it is most proving its superiority to other systems, i.e. when it is managing us through a difficult, messy adjustment. The books cited here seem to worry that democracy is in trouble because...
...the electorate isn’t just, disinterested and well-informed, but I think this would only be a problem if the purpose of a political system were to express deep political truths. In fact I’d argue that nothing is more dangerous than such a political system: what we need is...
...one that allows our institutions to adjust, however clumsily, as conditions change, and unfortunately because there are times, like today, when change is extremely messy, chaotic and hard to predict, the best we can hope for is to adjust in a messy, chaotic and...
...unpredictable way. Like in the 1930s and the 1970s, I think the populism and “crisis of democracy” that we are experiencing today is just democracy doing what it is supposed to do. It is the non-democracies that are not adjusting, and while this may look like purpose and...
...stability, in fact I think it just reflects institutional rigidity. Jefferson is supposed to have wanted a bloody revolution every fifty years to drive institutional change, but while that may be more aesthetically pleasing, perhaps our way is better.
tabletmag.com/jewish-news-an…
I meant to paste this:
monticello.org/site/research-…

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Michael Pettis

Michael Pettis Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @michaelxpettis

Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 16
1/4
 Because the only sustainable way to rebalance the Chinese economy towards a greater role for consumption in driving demand requires that household income, including transfers, rise faster than GDP, it is good news that...
english.news.cn/20250416/47426…
2/4
 China's per capita disposable income increased by 5.6% (5.5% nominal) year on year in the first quarter of 2025, versus GDP growth of 5.4%.

The problem is that the gap between GDP growth and household income growth must be much larger.
3/4
 For China to balance meaningfully over the next ten years, for example, consumption must grow by roughly 3 percentage points more than GDP every year, which suggests that household income must also grow that much faster.
carnegieendowment.org/posts/2024/09/…
Read 4 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 16
1/8
 China's GDP growth for the first quarter of 2025 came in above expectations on a year-on-year basis and below expectations on a quarter-on-quarter basis, which shows how hard it is to reconcile the two.

english.news.cn/20250416/fb2cb…
2/8
 At 5.4% year on year, compared to 5.3% in 2024, economic activity in the first quarter of 2025 was disproportionately driven by a surge in exports. On a quarter on quarter basis GDP growth was only 1.2%, however, below expectations and well below last year's 1.5%.
3/8
 Much of the growth occurred in March. Retail sales and industrial production both grew much faster than expected, with the former rising 5.9% year on year (compared with 4.0% in the first two months), and the latter rising 7.7% (compared with 5.9% in the first two months).
Read 8 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 15
1/10
WSJ: "Around this time, less developed parts of the world, where labor costs were much lower, began dialing up manufacturing of nondurable goods in Latin America and Asia. The U.S. started importing more and more of those items."

wsj.com/economy/us-man…
2/10
I think this is a common misperception. It is not low wages abroad that drove manufacturing out of the US. After all Japanese wages in the late 1980s matched or even exceeded American wages, and yet Japan nonetheless absorbed a great deal of manufacturing from the US.
3/10
What is more, the most successful manufacturing exporters to the US were not the countries with the lowest wages, but often countries, like Japan and Germany, with the highest wages.

That's because what matters is wages relative to productivity.
Read 10 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 15
1/6
 SCMP: "Yu has been outspoken in his advocacy for the reduction of China’s US Treasury bill holdings and has advised Beijing to stay alert for any attempts to use the country’s foreign assets against it."

via @scmpnewssc.mp/8tmps?utm_sour…
2/6
 It won't be easy for China to shift away from US assets, but to the extent it tries, this could create a new set of tensions within the global trading system. That's because every year China must acquire enormous amounts of foreign assets to balance its surplus.
3/6
 In the past these foreign assets have mostly been in the US, but if China were to start buying non-US assets while, at the same time, selling off part of its existing US holdings, this would mean a major redirection of asset purchases, mainly to the EU and Japan.
Read 6 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 5
1/4
 Good article on how US tariffs are complicating the relationship between China and the EU. Some analysts argue that US tariffs will force China and the EU closer together as each diverts its exports from the US to the other.

nytimes.com/2025/04/04/wor…
2/4
 But that assumes that either the EU is willing to replace the US as consumer of last resort for excess Chinese manufacturing capacity, or that China will play that role for the EU. The former will be extremely painful for the EU, while the latter is all but impossible.
3/4
 The point is that what had seemed like a stable global trading regime was in fact based on an unsustainable dependence of the rest of the world on the willingness of the US (along with the UK and Canada) to exchange ownership of domestic assets for large trade deficits.
Read 4 tweets
Michael Pettis Profile picture
Apr 4
1/9
 Citibank thinks that "the 54% US tariffs on China’s goods announced since the start of Trump’s second presidential term may drag the country’s gross domestic product growth down by 2.4 percentage points in 2025."
via @economicsbloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2/9
 I don't think this is the right way to think about it. The surge in China's trade surplus contributed 1.5 percentage points (ppt) to China's GDP growth in 2024. This is an extraordinarily high contribution, and there is almost no way it will be...
3/9
 achieved again in 2025, but because I don't think Trump's will have much as much of an impact on reducing the US trade deficit this year as many think, the chances are that China's trade surplus will be as big this year as it was last year, or not much smaller.
Read 9 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us!

Send Email!

:(