Category Archives: China

Is the US Taking Too Much of the Brunt of the Crisis Aftermath?

Before readers throw brickbats at me, I’m just acting as the messenger for two articles, one by Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff, the other by the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf. Each points out that the US is taking a proportionately bigger hit than other big economies post crisis, particularly in terms of unemployment. And this is actually […]

US Faces Substantial Obstacles to Increasing Rare Earths Production

Reader James S. highlighted a useful article at the MIT Technology Review, “Can the U.S. Rare-Earth Industry Rebound?” Our only quibble to this solid piece is its summary, which underplays some critical aspects of the article: The U.S. has plenty of the metals that are critical to many green-energy technologies, but engineering and R&D expertise […]

China Drops Rare Earths Ban

Here’s the update, per the New York Times: The Chinese government on Thursday abruptly ended its unannounced export embargo on crucial rare earth minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan, four industry officials said. The embargo, which has raised trade tensions, ended as it had begun — with no official acknowledgment from Beijing, or […]

Have the US and China Kissed and Made Up?

The recent jousting between the US and China had the look of a full on row. And the spectacle at last weekend’s G20 seemed to offer further confirmation, with Geithner proposing a cap on current account surpluses that was aimed at China above all. But now the Financial Times tells us that relations are already […]

Geithner Pushes for Cap on Current Account Surpluses

In all honesty, the news report out of the G20 strikes me as such a weird idea that I don’t know what to make of it. From the Financial Times: During an all-night meeting in South Korea of finance ministers from the G20 group of countries, the US called on nations to cap current account […]

What does PBOC’s latest rate hike tell us?

By Yiping Huang, Professor of Economics at the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University. Cross-posted from VoxEU. On 19 October, the People’s Bank of China announced a series of rate hikes. This column argues that the moves were aimed at combating domestic inflation and avoiding the mistakes of Japan in the 1980s. On 19 […]

“A currency war the US cannot win”

Yves here. This post cites a number of recent Western commentaries on China’s currency policies; I suggest, for one stop shopping, you read Martin Wolf comment, “Why America is going to win the global currency battle.” There are several points in the argument below that are curious, to say the least. One is the notion […]

Satyajit Das: Weapons of Choice in Trade Wars

By Satyajit Das a risk consultant and the author of the Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives During the European debt crisis, in a matter of days, the dollar strengthened by around 10%. The weakness of the Euro and resultant appreciation of the Renminbi by over 14% reduced […]

Rare Earths Row Continues to Build

Bloomberg reported on a rather peculiar announcement from the Chinese officialdom, which comes off as a rather lame rationalization of its ban on rare earths exports. If you are late to this cause celebre, rare earths confusingly really aren’t rare, but they are found only in fairly low concentrations and are nasty to mine. They […]

Puzzling Out China’s Saber Rattling

One of Winston Churchill’s oft repeated saying was, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.” Of late, China has become a Russian-level conundrum to the wider world. Developed economies are troubled by Middle Kingdom’s increasingly aggressive economic stance; neighboring countries are rattled […]

Extreme Measures: Currency/Trade Tensions Rising, Will Action Follow?

After the in retrospect not that terrible first acute phase of the financial crisis, August-September 2007, this blog began taking note of Extreme Measures. These were proposals by respectable people for dealing with the burgeoning mess that were usually very creative and had zero chance of happening. The fact that so many normally sound people […]

Currency Tensions Rising

The fact that an IMF meeting ended with the participants unable to feign a narrowing of differences on the currency front is further evidence that positions are hardening. And let us put none too fine a point on this: the currency row is simply an acceptable way to fight over imbalanced trade patterns. As we […]

More Tensions on the Currency Front

A scan of various news stories shows obvious signs of continued jockeying on the currency front. Bloomberg reports that the BRICs (at least according to Russia) aren’t at all receptive to US efforts to weaken currency controls. The US position, as presented by Timothy Geithner, is that undervalued currencies (meaning the renminbi) produce can produce […]

Currency War Threats Escalating

Last week, the simmering threat of trade disputes erupted into a full boil when Brazil’s finance minister Guido Mantega said that national governments around the world were weakening their currencies in an “international currency war” to gain competitive advantage. Mantega stressed that Brazil was prepared to back his words with action to lower the value […]

Is China Getting Religion on Restructuring Its Economy?

A story up on Bloomberg may be far more significant than its bland headline, “China to Spur Domestic Demand to Stabilize Economy, Wen Says,” suggests. In recent posts, we’ve inveighed about the dangers of the path China is now on. Its economy is unbalanced to an unprecedented degree. Exports plus investment account for a full […]