CFR senior fellow. Views are my own. Retweets are not endorsements. Writes on sovereign debt and capital flows.
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Wolf confirms that China seems a real upside in Trump's global trade war -- 
One implication, of course, is that the Saudis are on track to run a substantial external deficit in 2025 -- 
I have focused heavily on the net external debt position precisely because it doesn't hinge heavily on stock market valuations (and the FDI position is a bit problematic as foreign FDI is valued using the US stock market). 2/ 
Some simple tariff math. The "just pay it" cost is thus 2.2% of GDP. But actual tax revenue from the tariff will be lower. If the short-term elasticity is 1, imports fall by a little more than 2% of GDP, to around 9 pp of GDP & the direct tax revenue is 1.75 pp of GDP. 2/
But even if the current account surplus is understated, it isn't quite as understated as it was in the first half of 2024 ... the reported surplus, FDI flows and portfolio inflows do imply that Chinese residents should be accumulating about $125b a quarter in foreign assets. 2/ 
That is well, a rather bold move -- one that rises questions about what exactly firms like Pfizer are hiding ...
The "just pay it cost" of the 20% tariff on China (30 bp of GDP) and "finished autos" (23 bp of GDP) already exceed the "just pay it cost" of the Section 301 tariffs of Trump's first term (15% on 2.6 pp of GDP, or 40 bps of GDP) -- and that is before the RECIPROCAL tariffs
The roughly $400b Chinese current account surplus in the last 4qs isn't as extreme an outlier as $200b in the 4qs to q2 but it still puts China's current account surplus well below the rest of East Asia. &the goods data tells another story all together
I take Andrew Batson's point that the signal matters, not just the details -- and the signal recently is that China is more keen on promoting consumption. But the details (and scale of support) still matter!
And the fourth quarter isn't an outlier -- the runup in the US current account deficit in 2024 (please take note @IMFNews) was financed privately, official (official = foreign central bank and SWF) demand for US assets was modest!
That's real money. The net global current account (or trade imbalance, if you don't trust the current account numbers right now) is something like $1.5 trillion, so $400b is 1/4 of the total net financial flow that sustains trade imbalances. 2/ 
And since China has had a policy of limiting its Treasury holdings (and shifting fx reserves over to the SCBs and policy banks) since around 2010, China's share of the Treasury market has shrunk radically ...
Canada is the wrong target, as it is in fact a good market for US manufactures. The best in fact. And raising the price of industrial inputs (like Canada's low carbon aluminum) makes US downstream industry less competitive ...
I have been baning on about this for a while. That's because it is obvious in the data. Pharma imports were $112b before the TCJA. They are now $260b. 
Official demand has been extremely flat the last two years -- with Chinese sales offset by other countries purchases. China is adjusted for Euroclear -- and Chinese sales were stronger in 23 and early 24 than in recent months ...
Surging imports led the trade deficit (sign reversed) to pop off the page (the annualized run rate is something like $1.8 trillion ... )