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Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 26

Happy Memorial Day to Americans! And good morning to Asia!

Let's talk about something very topical. Debt. Yes, it has risen. How much debt do we have really? Who owns it? Why is cost of debt an issue?

Can the US solve its debt crisis?

This chart is my fav chart. I show stock of debt & then flow of debt (change since 2019 in orange bubble). Debt matters in terms of who owns it, which sector, etc.

Who is the biggest debt of them all? Well, Japan. It is also the biggest creditor to the world (lending money). Japanese debt is unique in that because of weak private sector, the government has been just expanding like crazy because the households and corporates just sit on savings.

Okay, why is this important? Well, those savings traditionally invested in their own debt (used to be very low yielding on the longer end) and also OTHERS' debt, USA + other emerging markets, also Europeans etc.

The Japanese sovereign yield curve is interesting not just for Japanese lifers, banks & JGB strategists but also for everyone else.

What has happened? Well, per usual they will run fiscal deficit. Nothing new. But the BOJ also owns like 48% of this debt and wants to reduce, but very hard because lifers etc don't want to buy so much more of this supply.

So what happens? The yield curve steepens. What is a yield curve? Well, you can borrow short-term (overnight) or for a long time (30 to 40 year in Japan) at a set rate. Japan has been running very close to zero rate for a long time.

So debt is not an issue if your servicing costs were close to zero.

But the longer, esp the 40-yr is now 3.5%. Yep!
The shorter end, which is policy rate is 0.5%.

This curve is STEEP!

Read 13 tweets

Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 14

Good morning,

US April inflation came over night softer, and that's no surprise really - we knew that energy, food and service costs were going lower. Everyone said, well, what pain for China if April exports were strong, not to the US of course, but to the world (+8.1%)YoY. The same is said about US CPI. It's actually slower to 2.3%YoY despite a very soft USD & tariffs that started since February.

What does that mean? Why did the the US-China both come to the table to stop the embargo of trade?

Can both of these arguments be true? Of course. First, we must talk about these different balance sheets. They are one and the same. But they interact differently.

CPI is a domestic phenomenon. US inequality/lack of affordable housing/high costs of college/healthcare/etc are DOMESTIC IN NATURE. We call it NON-TRADEABLE. Sure, higher steel & timber make building a house more expensive. Higher appliances also make it expensive. But let's be honest here, the biggest costs of the house is the land & next costs is the regulations and the permits and the actual time and capital erecting it.

California/NYC/Seattle where the jobs are all have regulations that make it very expensive to build. And that has been the case during LOW TARIFF REGIME.

So listen, just think if you live anywhere. When you get a paycheck, where does your money go? Well, if you rent or mortgage, then it's HOUSING.

Next, if you live in the US and send your children out of state or private for education, it's not a rounding error on two middle class incomes.

Of course, another essential - FOOD.
Another one is transport - that includes FUEL + Car (and indirect cost is TIME).

Goods, while you know, nice to have, durable goods you buy once and hopefully last you a decade or two, like a washing machine or a fridge or a microwave.

Toys, definitely like you buy according to age and once & don't repeat and prolly can get used because everyone disposes of this once the child is done.

So when you look at US inflation, the largest weights aren't GOODS or IMPORTED goods for a consumer.

It may be a very big part of a producer that imports intermediates. Say an oil driller that needs steel to build infra to drill or a domestic producer of appliances that need parts that are cheaper to source, say China.

Irrespective, an AVERAGE American person isn't going to feel tariffs. They will feel it via the news, via tiktok, via social media, via the financial markets that have exposure to the higher costs, but they are not feeling it much if they don't have a lot of financial assets.

So the reality is that inflation in the US is GOING DOWN for core goods. Egg inflation is lower after a flu supply shock. US food exporters will sell more domestically if selling abroad faces tariffs. But food isn't the bulk of inflation.

It's the services like housing etc. And they are going down.

Read 9 tweets

Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 13

Of course - China would say it didn’t care that there was an embargo on Chinese goods by it’s #1 customer but a 1trn surplus country with manufacturing share of GDP key to investment and consumption & indirect sector like services would care.

Why? Factories shut first (impact on China), shortages/empty shelves later (impact on the US & due to front loading much later & most goods are discretionary), & so the pain that China feels from trade war is real while the US is expectations of pain via financial assets movement, which may or may not come.

And the reality is who blinked/caved first doesn’t matter. But anyone who laughed at this & said China can just hunker down & accept massive unemployment of 5 to 8millions is not realizing the importance of jobs, especially manufacturing job.

It anchors the entire economy, including services.

Like people that lose steady paying jobs that pay for pensions etc will not want services like restaurant, movies, haircuts as often, nails, music lessons for kids etc.

Not all services are equal. Services were lost during COVID & never recovered & anyone who has lived in a country with high services & informal jobs know that u cannot steadily gain income on gigs.

U need a steady pay check. At the national level, it is millions & hundreds of millions account compounding to give national savings and investment.

Read 5 tweets

Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 9

UK-US trade-deal and what does it tell you about Asian trade deals?

The UK got 100k auto for 10% vs 232 25% for autos & that's basically 100% of UK auto exports to the US (exported 104k in 2024)

UK got jet engines & plane parts at 0%, which is also a top export

UK got 0% on steel but the UK is on the verge of closing the last steel plant, which is Chinese owned anyway, so no benefit here but maybe it will help beef up some production.

10% on the rest of exports.

Mutual reduction of tariffs on ethanol + beef (agri win for the US but not so much)

For autos, given the 10% tariff but at 100k quota, which is basically all of UK autos, there is no room for "rerouting" of other autos that won't get tariffed. Meaning, the lower tariff from 25% to 10% but with a quota is an interesting move that sets up for EU trade talks on autos.

Steel - UK not a threat so 0% means maybe UK can beef up product but less competitive than the US as the US is almost self-sufficient w/ steel

Agri - US will need to produce beef that UK standard to export. I suppose that can't be hard

Ethanol is at 0% tariff so a win for US agri. For US soybean producers etc, ethanol is a win but how big is it if its biggest export market, China, is shut?

There are talks that the US will slash tariffs on Chinese goods. But let's remind ourselves this:

The US has 20% tariffs on China from Trump 1.0 to Biden (roughly) + 20% of fentanyl tariff on China + reciprocal that was later escalated to 145%.

If the US lowers 145% to say 50%, you still have close to 100% tariffs on China on most goods and higher levels for say autos.

nypost.com/2025/05/08/bus…

Read 5 tweets

Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 8

Okay, I want to talk about tariffs a bit because there are a lot of tariffs. On everyone:

1) Steel + aluminium +25%
2) Autos is 25% (and some auto parts except USMCA qualified) - but note that Trump has realized that steel & alum are INTERMEDIATE GOODS and when you tax that then you got a big problem so he's BACKTRACKING on that for the auto sector, as in, they don't get steel & alum on top of auto
3) 10% on everyone ex China on top of above until early July in Asia.
4) China gets embargo level of tariffs or >100% and some >200%.
5) Exemptions for semiconductor, energy, pharma, ICT (phones, laptops etc), commodities.

How bad is this?

Tariffs are a tax on investment so Trump is PUTTING A TAX ON INVESTMENT ABROAD.

Specifically: steel & alum & auto ex USMCA and specifically China.

More to come of course but this is now.

He is starting to understand that when you tax a lot of stuff, especially sectoral, especially intermediates, you are SHORTENING SUPPLY CHAINS AS THIS COMPOUNDS.

A car is made of thousands of parts. Steel is part of it of course. So he has to make exemptions to make sure things don't kill the auto sector that he is trying to rescue/prop up. But supply chains are complicated.

The US used to be almost tariff free. Low single digit of trade-weighted tariff. That means a lot of PING PONG OF TRADE.

As in you can ship intermediates back and forth and have things assembled etc. SUPPLY CHAINS LENGTHENED.

Tariffs SHORTEN SUPPLY CHAINS.

So this complex supply chains that is stretching across US-Canada-Mexico and Asia (ping-ponged across Asia from Japan to Malaysia/Thailand/China) etc is all going to get shortened.

So that is what tariffs will do. Supply chains will be more REGIONALIZED.

No matter what the negotiations will be - US w/ China for example, or US with other Asians or Europeans, the fact is that Trump tariffs are starting at MAXIMALIST positions and will settle at a MORE REASONABLE POSITION BUT STILL VERY HIGH TARIFF REGIME VS BEFORE.

And they will be very TARGETED to shorten supply chains to favor US/Canada/Mexico & maybe key allies in Asia and key allies in Europe.

US trade will China will ultimately be to serve rest of the world or to feed into the above. It will ultimately be cutoff. Because China and the US are strategically decoupling. They are putting a floor on that speed but the speed is towards decoupling.

Read 11 tweets

Trinh

@Trinhnomics

May 6

I'm back in Hong Kong after being in Poland for two weeks. Poland is a country that is better every year (I have been going there every year since 2015) & a country that is very mindful of its geography and being next to two giants (Germany & Russia) that have historically invaded. Kaliningrad (Russia, which was a former Prussian or German town) borders the north & so the Pols are painfully aware the very thin line between peace and a potential invasion. The entrance to my husband's family farm marks several grave cites. One of them is the Tomb of Unknown soldiers from WW1 and we regularly find WWII remnants on the farm ground as well as rubbish from the communist collectivist era when it was part of the Soviet Union or Russian empire.

Poland is an interesting country for me to visit as it is am EM with world class infrastructure but at the same time you can see in the people the pain of the past. If you see older Pols, they look like they have had a hard life in their body and face. This is very similar to what you see in China or other parts of Asia where the impoverish past is very recent and generational differences in skin/look/aesthetic reflect not just time but also transformation of society.

What I find interesting about Warsaw is that brutalist of Soviet architecture - the Nazi invasion (Germany & German soldiers) leveled the city w/ extreme severity and so most of the city is newer than the "new world" as they were built post war or re-created post war. If you find an older building/neighborhood, it's actually pretty rare and very treasured, like the Polytechnic University neighborhood that looks like Paris while the rest look, well, brutal at best.

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