Trade War with China

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Gatekeeper

Brigadier
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That's why I have long suspected that the Trade War is not about trade, but about divorce. The U.S. cannot trust a strategic competitor that would potentially dominate the high tech industries of tomorrow. Therefore, Washington has to ensure that its allies would not be dependent on China for high-tech products like smartphones, the Internet, and other communication equipment.

No, it's about stopping China overtaking USA as the No1 economy in the world, and the implication for the US being No.2
 

Gatekeeper

Brigadier
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Will Low RMB Exchange Rate Cause Imported Inflation in China?
How Low RMB Exchange Rate Becomes Trump's headache?

Someone has been fanning, in this thread, the misinformation that low RMB exchange rate will cause imported inflation in China, and has concluded, in a self-claimed authoritative way, that China is "between a rock of a hard place" because of low Yuan exchange rate, suggesting China is losing the trade war. But this guy knows nothing about economics.

There is no danger of imported inflation in current China no matter how low Yuan rate might go against the Dollar, unless China's economic fundamentals have changed.

US brokerage houses, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase in particular, have been urging their clients to prepare for a Yuan rate breaking 7, even breaking 8, for quite a while now. You can argue today's Yuan devaluation is a result of profit-driven speculation, or a politics-motivated speculation, or a monetary policy maneuver, or anything else, but no matter what the causes may be, the Yuan devaluation can't cause, and won't cause inflation in China. To have an inflation in China, you have to change China's economic fundamentals, including the mechanism of pricing in China.

To most of economies in the world, imported inflation is a fake topic. You may have an inflation, such as Germany after WWI, or Zimbabwe in the 1990s, but your inflation is unlikely to be an imported one unless (1) your currency is well accepted by foreign countries, so you can import foreign consumer goods and foreign services at your will; and (2) your import is so huge that imported goods and services dictate your domestic prices. Clearly there are only few countries can meet these criteria in history. Germany's high inflation from the 1920s to the 1930s was certainly not caused by importing too much foreign goods. As a defeated country of WWI, Germany had zero hard currencies to buy foreign goods at that time. A similar case happened to Zimbabwe in the 1990s. Its high inflation was caused by low domestic outputs, not high import. As poor as a beggar, what could Zimbabweans use to pay for the foreign goods they intent to buy? Nothing. If the Zimbabweans had nothing to pay for foreign goods, who was going to sell them anything? No one. Then, why is the term of imported inflation so popular in our daily life? Well, I guess this is because people misuse the conception of "imported inflation" for their own convenience.

Right now, there is only one country has the privilege to imported inflation. That's the US. For other economies in the world, sorry guys, you are not qualified to call your inflation an imported inflation because when you lose your own price stability, either you have little good money to buy foreign goods, or foreigners will sell you nothing due to concerns about your credit standing, or both. Without huge amount of foreign goods present in your country, how can you blame foreign goods and services for your inflation? Certainly you can't.

China has the strongest pricing mechanism in the world. China not only is the largest consumer goods producer in the world, but also is the most versatile merchandise producer worldwide. Therefore, China can set its domestic prices using its own products. No matter how much foreign goods China imports, it will always be insignificant in comparison to the huge amount goods produced domestically, thus impossible for imported goods to distort Chinese prices systematically. Most importantly, the Chinese economy is a hybrid one where SOEs control the most important parts of the economy, which sets the tone for prices. As long as the SOEs function normally, there is no way for foreign forces to destabilize China's pricing. No price instability, no inflation. Yuan rate, regardless how it fluctuates, will not change China's domestic pricing.

The good side of low Yuan exchange rate is that it can offset major negative effects brought by high US tariff. The most important reason that China keeps to make so much consumer goods to export even at very low profit margins is to keep migrant workers employed, so that China can continue its urbanization. As long as Chinese goods is price competitive in international markets, Chinese will be employed and Trump's trade war will have little impact to Chinese economy. After the great recession of 2008, China increasingly reviews the dollar is something of the past. Thus, trade surplus with the US is no longer what China chases after. In order to win the trade war against the US, China can even completely ignore the profit margins for the goods exported to the US, as unemployment is the chief casualty of any trade war. Of course China will have to resort to state subsides to the producers in this extreme case. Can the US complain about this practice? No more. If you can subsidize your soybean farmers, why can't I subsidize my appliance producers?

The bad side of low Yuan exchange rate is that it will inevitably discourage the Chinese to spend money outside the border. This will definitely slow down the speed of Yuan internationalization, which is considered as a set back for China's long term goals. This is why the People's Bank of China is unhappy when Yuan rate goes too low.

The ugly side of low Yuan exchange rate is that it encourages market speculation, which potentially causes financial market chaos. This is why the People's Bank of China will intervene when Yuan rate swing too violently. Most people who spread rumors and misinformation about Yuan rate are speculators. This explains why those people shout at highest volume to predict Yuan's next movement, because they are the ones who are most likely to profit from Yuan rate's big swings.

I'm sorry, You're not exactly correct in your assertion regarding inflation, and exchange rates.

It's true that inte-war Germany's inflation problems was more to do with paying retributions to France for WW1 leading to printing of money to pay for it, and the resulting inflation this has caused. Therefore, inflation is not "imported".

But inflation can be caused by a number of different factors, one of which can be imported!

Theres always a danger of Importing inflation by depreciation/devaluation! The degree of the impact depends on the country's propensity of imports. In a closed society, the impact would be zero, but then again, in a closed society theres no need to depreciate one's currency, as no trade has taken place therefore no need to exchange currencies.

In an open society however, and which China is one of the most trading nation of the world, all imported items will increase in price, period.

These increases will lead to consumer price index to increase thus inflation. Particularly if the trading nation imports raw materials to manufacture and for energy consumption (OIL)

We've seen the effect of this during the Arab-Israeli war in the 1970s when the oil producing country put up oil prices (the effect is same as devaluation) and thus making everything more expensives, causing Stagflation all over the world.

Ever since, every countries' treasury department always managed their exchange rate. This is why is laughable that China is being accused as a "currency manipulator" a label used to demonise China. I mean how can China be wrong when EVERY country in the world manages their own currency.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
From Asia times
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Washington is wrong about China’s economy
The US economy is weaker, and China’s stronger, than analysts believe

ByDAVID P. GOLDMAN

Americans want to believe that their economy is doing well and that China’s economy is doing badly, as President Trump keeps saying. One shouldn’t blame Trump for this; underestimating competitors is America’s national pastime.

A recent embarrassing example was a report by Wells Fargo analyst Roger Read
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, claiming that a fall in the growth rate in China’s diesel consumption “is most likely tied to economic factors and the effects of the tariff ‘war’ with the US”

As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said, this isn’t even wrong. The fellow from Wells Fargo failed to observe that China’s rail traffic is growing 10%, year-on-year, which is also the rate of expansion of China’s rail network. The more China ships by rail, the less dependent it is on diesel trucks.


The relationship is robust statistically (I’ll spare you the econometrics, which show that lagged values for changes in diesel demand predict changes in rail traffic). The analyst also failed to observe that heavy truck sales
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in March 2019, driven by vehicles powered by natural gas.

China-diesel-consumption.png


China’s economy is becoming more efficient, shifting away from costly (and polluting) diesel fuel to more energy-efficient and cleaner railways and natural-gas-powered trucks. The notion that the tariff war might have caused diesel demand to drop in China is silly. Only 5% of China’s manufacturing is sold to the US, and most of that is consumer electronics and similar goods with a very low ratio of weight to value.

This sort of thing hardly would be worth the mention, except for the sad fact that a distorted view of China’s economic vulnerability contributes to American miscalculation in the present trade war. I am an American, and if there is a trade war, I want America to win it – but this sort of self-consoling delusion leads to humiliation rather than triumph.

By the same token, President Trump, and the China hawks in general, point to supposedly strong economic performance in the United States as evidence that Washington has the upper hand in trade negotiations. Again, that is a self-consoling delusion with dangerous consequences.

The final US GDP report for the first quarter shows the weakest growth since 2013. Final sales to private domestic purchasers at an annual rate of just 1.2%. That measures what Americans sold to other Americans. The headline GDP growth number of 3.1% is inflated by quirks of national income accounting.

Real-final-sales-to-domestic-purchasers.png


How do we get from a 3.1% headline number to an underlying growth rate of just 1.2%? Of the 3.1% headline growth, 1% came from a reduced trade deficit. Imports fell sharply in the first quarter, and the deficit fell, but imports were lower because growth in retail sales fell sharply. The rate of change of imports to the US depends on retail sales.

US-imports-track-retail-sales.png


Another 0.6% of the 3.1% came from an increase in private inventories. That’s not necessarily good news either; inventories might be rising because demand is weaker. And another 0.4% came from higher government consumption.


That begs the question: Why are retail sales barely growing despite robust increases in employment?

The first reason is that although more people are working, they are working fewer hours. Year-on-year growth in total hours worked (total employment X average weekly hours) shows the same decline that we observe in the purchasing managers’ index.

YOY-change-in-total-hours-vs-NAPM-PMI-2.png


The second reason is that banks are tightening conditions for consumer credit. Credit card interest rates are at an all-time high although term yields are close to all-time lows. That simply means that banks are rationing credit.

Total credit to consumers (apart from home mortgages) is shrinking in real terms, if we take into account the shrinkage in home equity loan balances outstanding. During 2018 the combined rate of increase of revolving credit (mainly credit cards) and home equity stood at around 4.5%, but now has fallen to about 1.5%, or less than the inflation rate.

It matters little in the big picture whether China grows at 6% or 4% this year, to be sure. More important than the tariff war is the tech war. Washington doesn’t appear to have considered that the leading US chip designers depend on the Asian market. Intel makes 20% of its revenue in each of China, Singapore and Taiwan. Qualcomm makes 52% of its revenues in China and another 16% in South Korea. Nvidia makes 38% of its sales in Taiwan, 16% in China and a further 15% in the rest of Asia.

Huawei has not only leapfrogged its competitors in 5G broadband technology. It has designed its
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of Artificial-Intelligence enabled processors that compete with America’s best products. It very well may have the capacity to price its American competitors out of the critical Asian market. In a full-blown tech war, the US cannot be sure that China would not emerge with a dominant position in semiconductors.
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
I visited Tsingdao ( used to be a German colony ) a few years back. I was impressed with the infrastructure built by the Germans, particularly the decades-old water drainage system which is still being used today. The locals also did not speak ill of the Germans who seemed to be quite benevolent towards the governed local populace, unlike certain ugly and cruel neighbour of China.
Oh, yes, I hold the Germans in high regards.

Surprisingly they did all those within 16 years Yup that is how long the German were in Qingdao and how much they accomplish within that short time
A lot of old German building were destroyed during the war So if you want to see typical German residence at the turn of century Qingdao has some of the well preserved sample
upload_2019-5-30_18-46-5.png

upload_2019-5-30_18-46-51.png

upload_2019-5-30_18-48-44.png
 
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Gatekeeper

Brigadier
Registered Member
What is wrong with that Trump!

As if the trade war is not enough, he's now via twitter, slapped tariffics on Mexico Unless they stop illegal immigration!

Never mind the art of the deal, How about writing a new book call The art of "How not to win hearts and mind in two easy minutes"!
 

Bob Smith

Junior Member
Registered Member
What is wrong with that Trump!

As if the trade war is not enough, he's now via twitter, slapped tariffics on Mexico Unless they stop illegal immigration!

Never mind the art of the deal, How about writing a new book call The art of "How not to win hearts and mind in two easy minutes"!

The USMCA got sent to the Mexican senate today for ratification, too.

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He's throwing away so much goodwill around the world, in 10 years, there might even be a Chinese military base in Baja California.
 
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