Michael Pettis Profile picture
Sep 28, 2020 5 tweets 1 min read Read on X
1/5
All this external debt is definitely storing up future trouble for developing countries, but not just for them. When developing countries borrow money from abroad and spend it domestically, part of it can flow abroad again in the form of rich...

ft.com/content/8ef479…
2/5
people's profits, but most of it must go directly or indirectly to pay for imports from abroad.

This means that foreign borrowing by developing countries effectively transforms useless ex-ante savings into real global demand, something the world economy urgently...
3/5
needs. The problem is that once these countries can no longer borrow, and must begin to pay down the debt, what was once an addition to global demand becomes a subtraction from it: spending on real goods and services must be cut to fund increases in ex-ante savings.
4/5
Developing-country borrowing, in other words, is actually positive for global growth today, but can be negative for global growth tomorrow. This, by the way, is one of the strongest arguments why major lending countries should strongly support debt forgiveness for...
5/5
developing countries: to the extent that it boosts domestic employment, it will cost them nothing in the aggregate. It will mainly transfer income from international investors to domestic workers, producers, farmers and businesses.

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More from @michaelxpettis

Feb 4
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…
Read 8 tweets
Feb 3
1/4
Yicai: "China's macro leverage ratio – a measure of total debt relative to nominal GDP – rose by 11.8 percentage points to 302.3 percent in 2025, exceeding the 10.1 point increase recorded in 2024, according to a new research report by CASS.
yicaiglobal.com/news/chinas-de…
2/4
There is a lot of disagreement about the real debt-to-GDP ratio in China, especially given the difficulty of counting hidden debt, along with an "abnormal" rise in payables and receivables that reflects inability to pay debt more than it reflects rising revenues.
3/4
If we use the official total social finance number as the measure of debt, the ratio is 315%. The BIS and other entities show even higher ratios. But whatever the real number, it is among the highest in the world, perhaps exceeded only by Japan among major economies.
Read 4 tweets
Feb 2
1/7
SCMP: "Chinese scholars have called for greater urgency in reducing reliance on US dollar assets, particularly after Washington and its allies froze about US$300 billion in Russian foreign exchange reserves in 2022."
scmp.com/economy/global…
2/7
Although this may be a favorite new topic among academics – and not just Chinese academics - few seem to understand that a country cannot restructure global capital flows without also restructuring global...
3/7
trade flows, nor that a country cannot change its external imbalances without either changing its internal imbalances or changing the external imbalances (and thus the internal imbalances) of its trade partners.
Read 7 tweets
Jan 22
1/12
This talk about Europe's ability to wield its holdings of US Treasuries as a political tool is as divorced from reality as the talk about China's ability to wield its holdings of US Treasuries as a political tool.
via @ftft.com/content/7d6436…
2/12
For all the huffing and puffing, Chinese holdings of US assets actually increased. This shouldn't have been a surprise. If you run massive trade surpluses, you have no choice but to acquire foreign assets, and if you won't acquire the alternatives, you must buy US assets.
3/12
These analysts seem to forget that you cannot change your capital account without also changing your trade account, and that you cannot change your external imbalances without also changing your internal imbalances.
Read 12 tweets
Jan 21
1/7
EU commissioner for trade Maroš Šefčovič is absolutely right to question the usefulness of the WTO: "If the WTO is to meet today’s challenges, its rules must be fair and deliver balanced, legitimate outcomes. Currently, they do neither."
ft.com/content/2ff1d4…
2/7
The fact that decades of the largest, persistent trade imbalances in history have largely been WTO compliant suggests strongly that the WTO is more about maintaining legal fictions than it is about discouraging the adverse impact of trade intervention on the global economy.
3/7
As Keynes (and many others) pointed out nearly a century ago, evidence that a country is intervening in trade shows up very clearly in the form of persistent, beggar-thy-neighbor trade surpluses. If the latter exists, then the former exists.
Read 7 tweets
Jan 21
1/6
Reuters: "Chinese leaders have pledged to "significantly" lift household consumption’s share of the economy over the next five years, but have not given a specific target."
reuters.com/world/asia-pac…
2/6
If we assume that Beijing hopes to raise the consumption share of GDP by 3-5 percentage points (roughly a third of what it would need to be a more "normal" low-consuming economy), consumption would have to grow by 1-2 percentage points faster than GDP over the period.
3/6
That's a pretty big gap, and one we have never yet seen in the past 3-4 decades of Chinese growth. The good way to manage this, of course, would be for consumption growth to accelerate, although it is not at all clear what would cause that acceleration.
Read 6 tweets

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