Michael Pettis Profile picture
Sep 29, 2020 5 tweets 2 min read Read on X
1/5
It's not so much Atlanticism but international relations more generally that will remain in retreat no matter who wins the US election, and although the world tends to be obsessed with the US and with its bilateral relationships, this retreat won't...

ft.com/content/09f95f…
2/5
depend on whoever is the US president. People in most countries believe their countries should turn inwards.

I argued in my 2013 book that we were going through a period in which global trade would inevitably contract, geopolitical conflicts...

amazon.com/Great-Rebalanc…
3/5
intensify, and anti-foreign and anti-immigrant feelings rise, and I think this remains a global issue. Perhaps because of its obsession with the US and with, more recently, the Trump circus, much of the world (and the global press) seems to focus on bilateral problems the...
4/5
US has with Europe, China and Russia, but in fact the three have equally, and often more, serious problems with many of their own immigrants, neighbors and international relationships, and this says nothing about either intra-European conflict or similar problems affecting...
5/5
India, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Brazil etc. Unfortunately I think the widespread desire to turn inwards and reject "foreigners" is structural, based on domestic economic imbalances, and so will continue for a few more years before reversing.

• • •

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

Dec 21
1/4
WSJ: "The number of ride-hailing drivers in China tripled to 7.5 million in the four years to 2024, even though the number of rides grew only by about 60% during the same period, government data shows."
wsj.com/world/asia/14-…
2/4
By shifting into the gig economy, workers reduce overall unemployment numbers without increasing the the total amount of wages workers receive. This is one of the reasons consumption growth has been so weak.

To boost consumption growth, Beijing must figure out how to...
3/4
get total wages to rise much more quickly, although it must do this without further undermining already-unprofitable businesses. But if it continues to subsidize business profits while also subsidizing wage growth, the rise in debt will only accelerate.
Read 4 tweets
Dec 17
1/10
President Macron says "We must acknowledge that these imbalances are both the result of weak EU productivity and China’s policy of export-driven growth."

The first part of that statement is technically not true.
via @ftft.com/content/c8fdf1…
2/10
Countries don't run trade deficits because of low productivity, any more than they run surpluses because of high productivity. That is not at all what global trade imbalances around the world tell us, and that is not why countries have lower or higher saving rates.
3/10
American productivity, to take one obvious example, is higher than that of Europeans, and several times higher than that of the Chinese, and yet it is the US that runs huge deficits and China, with the highest saving rate in the world, that runs huge trade surpluses.
Read 10 tweets
Dec 15
1/8
It's hard to find anything good in the November economic data for China, just as it is hard to find anything new to say. All the important indicators continue to weaken, as they have throughout the year, in some cases even decelerating further.
english.news.cn/20251215/a5915…
2/8
Retail sales, for example, were expected to grow a very disappointing 2.9% year on year in November. In fact they only grew 1.3%.

For all the talk of a greater role for consumption in driving growth, in the first 11 months of the year, retail sales were up just 4.0%.
3/8
Meanwhile industrial output rose 4.8% in November, a little below expectation and well below the 6.0% growth in the first 11 months of the year.

For me the main worry is the gap between the two, with the former so far this year growing 2 percentage points more slowly than...
Read 8 tweets
Dec 12
1/8
Caixin: "While concerns about weak demand and external uncertainties persist, this year's Central Economic Work Conference, which concluded on Thursday, marked a shift in tone. The official readout framed China's core economic challenge as...
caixinglobal.com/2025-12-12/chi…
2/8
a “prominent contradiction between strong supply and weak demand” — a structural issue rather than just insufficient consumption."

"The change" Caixin writes, "suggests Beijing sees supply-side imbalances, not just inadequate consumption, as a constraint."
3/8
Perhaps, but the only way you reduce a “contradiction between strong supply and weak demand” is either by reducing GDP growth, which Beijing doesn't seem to want, by increasing growth in consumption, which for all its efforts Beijing has been unable to do, or by increasing...
Read 8 tweets
Dec 11
1/4
WSJ: "President Trump’s barrage of tariff increases threatened to chill global trade flows, but commercial exchanges continued to increase as most of the international commerce system functions as it did before the onslaught."
via @WSJwsj.com/economy/trade/…
2/4
Contrary to what WSJ says, Trump's tariffs never really threatened to "chill global trade flows" except in the view of those (including far too many economists) who mistakenly thought of trade in incremental terms rather than in systemic terms.
3/4
As I wrote two years ago, the word "resilience" was going to be used over and over to describe trade as Trump's tariffs shifted trade and trade imbalances around without fundamentally changing them. That's because the only way the US can cause a reduction in its trade...
Read 4 tweets
Dec 10
1/4
The IMF formally recognizes that it is a depreciating RMB, not rising manufacturing efficiency, that drives China's growing trade surplus.
ft.com/content/9c92aa…
2/4
That's because a depreciating currency is both a subsidy for manufacturing (and tradable goods) and a tax on consumption. It works by reducing the household share of GDP, especially when reinforced by other production subsidies paid for directly or indirectly by households.
3/4
The net result of boosting manufacturing with subsidies and restraining consumption with taxes is to force the production of manufactured goods to grow faster than consumption – which also means forcing up the saving rate.
Read 4 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!

:(