Good morning ๐ง๏ธ๐ช๏ธ. A typhoon passed through ๐ญ๐ฐ& it's gloomy outside, just like the mood of markets after:
a) JPO said hedgy words "act as approprioate"
b) Carney speech on the dollar & digital $
c) China raising tariffs to 30% from 25% on 75bn
d) Trump raised 300bn tariffs to 15%
Facts of tariffs so far:
a) China imports from the US roughly 120bn & tariffed 110bn so got 10bn left & so to ESCALATE it needs to raise the level as volume limited
b) That happened w/ 75bn raising by 5% so items like US crude went from 25% to 30%
c) US imported ~550bn & so far
Events leading to today:
June '18: ๐บ๐ธ25% tariffs on 34b; ๐จ๐ณ retaliates w/ 25% on 34
Aug '18: ๐บ๐ธ25% on 16b; ๐จ๐ณ same
Sept '18: ๐บ๐ธ10% on 200b that'll be raised to 25% (1 Jan)
๐จ๐ณ retaliates w/ 5% on 60b
Truce
May '19: ๐บ๐ธ raises 10% to 25% on 200b
June '19: ๐จ๐ณ raises 5-25% on 60bn
Not yet tariffed by both sides but WILL starting 1 September 2019, yes this Sunday:
a) ๐บ๐ธ tariffs on the remaining (see chart ๐๐ป) 300bn by 10% that later exempt 156bn (mostly consumer goods till 15 December)
b) China retaliates w/ raising 5% on existing tariffs of 75bn so +5% ๐๐ป
๐๐ป:
c) ๐บ๐ธ Raising 5% on existing to 250bn to 30% on 1 October 2019.
By 1 October 2019: China tariffs on the US ranging from 10-30% of 110bn of goods & the US got 30% on 250bn of goods & 15% on 300bn of goods (w/ 156bn delayed til 15 Dec)
Basically all of trade b/n US&China ๐๐ป๐๐ป
d) By 15 December, unless there are efforts to delay tariffs, there will massive front-loading for fear of this happening & guess what?
WE WILL HAVE TARIFFS ON ALMOST ALL OF US CHINA TRADE.
But that never ends there. Watch investment.
70th anniversary of the People's Republic of China led by the CCP is on, wait for it:
1 October 2019, which is the same date that the 25% of 250bn goes to 30% & obvs a month before on 1 September 15% on 144bn (156bn to be applied on 15 December 19.
About that September talk๐ฌ..
As a recap: Notice that the "bark" much stronger than "bites" to manage expectations & actions always surprise u w/ lower magnitude but trend is escalation.
Meaning, worst case scenario now new normal & u rejoice when it escalates but less than "bark"๐๐ป
As in the 10% to 15% of 144bn of goods on 1 September 19 (15% on 156bn of consumer goods 15 December) & 25% to 30% for 250bn of mostly intermediate goods on 1 October may not be realized, which u'll rejoice but only b/c ur expectations are managed. Don't forget that norms change
Trump: Non-committal in China tariff delay. Told you. He just puts it out there so you price the WORST & then takes a bit away & then when it happens you will think it is GOOD NEWS.
True story. This is what happened since late Jan 2018. SPX futures up 1% vs -1% this morning.
Do you know what happens after every escalation so far for trade-war? Deescalation by both China & the USA (yep, true story), albeit short-term reprieve until it escalates again, kind of like a dance to get to know each other's limit...
Same script still plays to buy time๐๐ป
#Breaking Mofcom's Gao (de-escalating): Trade escalation not good for ๐จ๐ณ, ๐บ๐ธ; ๐บ๐ธ & ๐จ๐ณ in effective contact; ๐จ๐ณwon't discriminate against foreign firms; Won't crack down on foreign firms; discussing ๐บ๐ธ visits in Sept; ๐จ๐ณ has ample tools to respond but thinks should discuss removal
โข โข โข
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President Trump was inaugurated and the big question is to whom tariffs will be applied, not whether. Markets priced 8-9% tariffs on world before inauguration & so the dollar softened as he did not do this on Day 1.
But rest assure, it's coming. Let's talk about consequences through answering 3 key questions.
Ready?
First, I talked about tariffs here on this thread if you didn't read before () & this is a follow-up.
Question #1: Who is most vulnerable to Trump 10% tariff to the world in Asia?
First, I want to talk about a few ideas that was talked about in the previous thread on impact of tariffs.
One is of course tariff level. He says 10% higher so that's our assumption here. Second, elasticity of demand assumption, which I took as 4, which is basically from the literature and also from the Fed paper.
Anyway, to think about impact on GDP, you have to think how big of a trader they are anyway in terms of exports to the US.
Chart 3 shows you that exports to the US is the highest for Vietnam & lowest for Australia, Indonesia and India.
Chart 2 shows you that what is the manufacturing share of GDP an the highest is Taiwan, China, Thailand, Vietnam & Malaysia. Lowest is Australia and India.
Okay, yesterday, you had China rocking global trade with a USD1trn merchandise trade surplus, but by Friday (17th), we'll get news that China industrial profits are FALLING for a 3rd year in row.
What's going on? How does this work? And finally, what does it mean for the rest of the world?
Let's look at China industrial profits for 2024 from Jan to November.
It's down -4.5% & in 2023 it was down & in 2022 it was down.
Fine, but not all sectors experienced decline. These are the sectors with some profit: food manufacturing, textile, tobacco, furniture manufacturing, electricity, waste, and basically a few sectors kind of not that negative or flat - general equipment.
Sorry, meant to write a longer thread but had to go! Long story short, China is experiencing a balance sheet recession and with a few sectors growing so all that savings is being channeled to it.
That means reduced profits and which means to make more money it has to sell outward & thus that translates to profits being squeezed increasingly abroad too as it gains market share.
You can see that in the export data where exports grow but imports not so much. In Germany's case, it's losing out of both ability to export to China (Chinese imports of German stuff decline) & also China selling more of its goods in Germany.
But that is not all. The Germans are likely facing competition in third markets too.
And replace Germans with others like Japan, South Korea, and of course even not big traders like Indonesia.
So China's problem of weakening profits is global.
First, let's talk about the losers, as in DECLINE IN CHINA IMPORTS.
Germany saw imports from China decline by -10.7%, followed by France (-5.9%) and then Italy (-3.2%). Meaning, the Dutch still got something China want (ASLM chip making machine) but others saw decline of goods.
To add salt to injury, not only is Europe losing market share in China, Chinese goods have RISEN in Europe in nominal term or exports rose to 516bn.
But that's just Europe. It likely also lost out in other markets too, but the US. Europe gained US market share.
Who else lost out in LESS CHINESE IMPORTS (contraction in nominal term)??? Well, Thailand, which is a -5.2% contraction, Indonesia too! -4% (Chinese demand weak so commodity weak = less imports) And Japan -2.6% and also Australia -10% (Chinese demand weak so less demand for commodity etc)
And of course India at -3%. India is an interesting case because it loses in EXPORT TO CHINA BUT China has managed to export more and so India got a pretty large deficit with China at more than -100bn.
It is a beautiful day in HK. Iโm at lunch, well, waiting for my bff at a wonderful Italian place called Cantina (next door was our wedding reception 5 yrs ago) & opened up my fav pink paper & the FT Big Read was Ursula choking Europe with regulations (she also chairs a paper that also supposed give her more money to deregulate). There lies the rub. Can u let the person who has led Europe down this rabbit hole be the person to lead it out of it? Some pics from my walk from home to lunch. Hong Kong ๐ญ๐ฐ is lovely, best time to visit is October, November & December.
โInflexible EU rules set Europeโs car ๐ industry for failureโ says critics according to the paper.
โConservatives & far-right lawmakers accuse the blocโs ambitious green & digital agendas of punishing citizens & businesses.โ
Interesting the definition of conservative & far-right. But irrespective, you can see the results.
She & Draghi chaired a report that says the EU is uncompetitive & too regulated & strangled. Behind.
Okay, but who has been in charge?
Not the conservative & far-right. Ursula has been in charge. All along.
So if we have to measure her performance with, well, outcome, then what is the score card? She said it herself in the report.
The RBI just cut the cash rate by 50bps and kept the policy rate on hold at 6.5% as slowing government spending and a weakening manufacturing sector is dragging down GDP growth.
This is my short thread on examining the India-Japan investment and trade relationship & why they haven't changed much in 10 years despite India being a big domestic demand market that Japan needs.
I argue that this is symptomatic of what is happening to Indian firms themselves. They find it hard to scale and leverage the labor endowments the country has.
How do we change this? Well, by changing the norms of thinking that the government needs to micro manage everything. It should set framework but let Indian private sector flourish.
Let's go.
First, what is the India Japan relationship? Well, it's getting better but remains SMALL relative to the ASEAN Japan (Vietnam Japan for example). Japan investment to India despite India being a huge domestic demand market that is super complementary to Japan weak demographic trends is at 4% of total. Look at ASEAN. Yes, at peak around 28% and settling about 24% of total.
India is a ginormous market. So why growing just from 2 to 4% of total???
Now let's look at Japan imports from India - it basically remains flat at a small level of 1% of total. Meanwhile, imports from China is 22% and ASEAN 15%.
So Japanese FDI to India has increased to 4% of total but imports remain small.
Basically this relationship remains small and has a lot of scope to grow.
I'm going to Delhi this Thursday for the India Japan Conference. Excited to go. The key thing I will emphasize while India is how much India needs manufacturing.
The contraction of manufacturing in Q3 2024 led to sharp slowdown of GDP to 5.4%YoY.
India needs manufacturing not just for cyclical growth but social stability. There is no way you can absorb that many people from the rural sector without manufacturing.
The government needs to put all its effort behind this. Manufacturing is the future. It is an essential ingredient to growth.
Why? Because we still live in a material world. How do I know? India has about USD100bn deficit with China in manufactured goods.
Shared my views in this documentary:
My op-ed on India jobs & manufacturing and why there must be more emphasis on manufacturing: