1/8 This article suggests that thanks to big data, Chinese exporters can redirect sales from foreign consumers to domestic consumers. It cites as an example a toothbrush manufacturer for whom exports now account for 60% of sales, down from 90%, after... bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2/8 Alibaba data on what Chinese consumers want helped them to figure out how to sell more domestically. The article goes on cite to Bai Ming, deputy director of the Ministry of Commerce as saying: “Turning to the domestic market adds one more option for Chinese exporters. In...
3/8 the future, exporters can sell to the market that’s most favorable, which reduces risks.”
This kind of thinking represents a classic fallacy of composition that is far too common in most discussions of Chinese rebalancing. While it is true that certain individual...
4/8 exporters can use big data to reduce their sales of consumer goods abroad while selling more at home, it is impossible for them to do so collectively. The reason China has an export surplus is because total domestic consumption is too low to allow Chinese manufacturers to...
5/8 sell at home all they produce.
That is why a reduction in exports cannot simply be redirected to domestic consumption. Fewer exports means lower national income and, with it, higher domestic unemployment, which in turn means less, not more, domestic consumption. This...
6/8 can only be resolved either by higher public-sector investment (and more debt) or by allowing higher domestic unemployment to persist.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are only two ways of increasing the consumption share of total Chinese production.
7/8 The unsustainable way is to increase household debt, and the sustainable way is directly or indirectly to increase the share ordinary Chinese households retain of Chinese GDP. China’s net exports are not a cause of low domestic consumption. They are a consequence. That...
8/8 is why for Chinese manufacturers collectively to export less doesn’t mean they can sell more to domestic consumers. It just means that they sell less overall, which without government intervention must result in more domestic unemployment and less total domestic consumption.
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2/5 That is exactly how it should be. Tariffs are effectively a tax on consumption and a subsidy to production (of tariffed goods). They work by transferring income from households (net importers) to producers of tradable goods.
3/5 The idea that Trump's tariffs would be paid for by foreigners was always nonsense. If they were, as I have often pointed out, they would have little to no impact on trade flows or on American deindustrialization.
1/7 My latest piece was written for friends who are EU policymakers or advisors. In it I argue that there is a difference between an inefficient manufacturing sector and a globally uncompetitive manufacturing sector. We shouldn't conflate the two. engelsbergideas.com/notebook/europ…
2/7 A country's manufacturing sector is not globally uncompetitive because it is inefficient, but rather because its wages are higher relative to productivity than those of its trade partners.
Efficiency is about how effectively an economy uses resources to create value.
3/7 Global competitiveness, by contrast, depends largely on how income is distributed within an economy.
This leaves the EU with two options if it wants to prevent domestic deindustrialization.
1/6 According to Greg Ip, in the US economy today, "rewards are going disproportionately toward capital instead of labor. Profits have soared since the pandemic. The result: Capital is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains." wsj.com/economy/jobs/c…
2/6 And as Marriner Eccles, FDR's Fed chairman, explained in the 1930s, this creates a dangerous illusion. The extent of business profits depends almost wholly on the purchasing power of ordinary people, which in turn depends on wages.
3/6 In a rapidly-growing developing economy, with huge unmet investment needs, it may be possible (even necessary) for profits to rise faster than wages because the resulting rise in saving can be deployed to productive investment.
1/5 Reuters: "The EU should consider either an unprecedented 30% across-the-board tariff on Chinese goods or a 30% depreciation of the euro against the renminbi to counter a flood of cheap imports, a French government strategy report said on Monday." reuters.com/world/china/fr…
2/5 I think it's only a question of time before the EU will intervene in its external account to protect its manufacturing sector, just as China has done for decades and the US is increasingly trying to do. It can implement all the reforms that have been proposed to improve...
3/5 the efficiency of its manufacturing, but while these reforms may indeed do just that, they won't improve Europe's competitive position.
This may sound counterintuitive at first, but I have a piece coming out soon in Engelsberg Ideas explaining why.
1/11
SCMP: "China’s potential growth rate could fall to about 2.5 per cent in the coming years unless action is taken, prominent Chinese economist Zhou Tianyong has warned." sc.mp/itwrt?utm_sour…
2/11
“Without a strong turnaround in total factor productivity and a meaningful expansion in household consumption, it will be difficult for China’s economic growth to reach 4 per cent or higher,” he added.
3/11
A 2-3% growth rate is becoming an increasingly popular reference growth rate for Chinese analysts. I'd argue that over the past several years, 2-3% has actually been the upper limit of growth once we strip out the "positive" impact of not recognizing bad investment.
1/8 Jason Furman: "A weaker dollar may improve the economy’s long-run balance, but it does so by forcing Americans to cut back on spending. That is like telling children to eat more spinach today so they will be healthier in the future." nytimes.com/2026/02/03/opi…
2/8 Furman is right. Currency appreciation reduces consumption costs in the short term by making imports cheaper, but in a hyperglobalized world, it also undermines domestic manufacturers by making them less competitive against foreign manufacturers.
3/8 Academic economists (mainly in the US) will argue that this is a good thing because the goal should be to maximize consumption, but the only sustainable way to maximize consumption over the longer term is to maximize production. ft.com/content/89110b…