Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns I have to admit to hyping the debate now swirling about protectionism. I believe that tariffs are not a very good solution to a trade problem as they are likely to result in retaliation and/or escalation. Moreover, they end up protecting small groups at the expense of higher […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns In 2002, the global economy was weak and equity markets around the world were at multi-year lows following the greatest equity bubble and bust in world history. Many policy makers including Alan Greenspan, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, feared a deflationary spiral of Great Depression proportions resulting […]
Read more...It would be better if we were not proven correct on this one, but when the US imposed stiff tariffs on imported tires from China late on Friday, we noted, “This could get interesting in a bad way.” The Chinese responded quickly over the weekend to announce they were investigating US auto parts and chicken, […]
Read more...The US tonight imposed steep tariffs on tires, a move directed against Chinese imports. From the Wall Street Journal: The Obama administration will put steep import duties on Chinese passenger and light truck tires, responding to what the U.S. International Trade Commission determined to be a surge of Chinese tire exports that has rocked the […]
Read more...When trade volumes tanked in the later part of 2008, quite a few observers expected a rise in protectionism. We haven’t seen a Smoot-Hawley analogue, a wide ranging measure that elicits retaliation. But that does not prevent policy makers from more targeted forms of gamesmanship. Trade has retreated from front-burner coverage due to the modest […]
Read more...We’ve commented from time to time on dubious Chinese data releases. But this report from Foreign Policy reports on an interest aspect: that the statistics are not manipulated only in the normal bureaucratic manner (fudging them) but also by getting companies to change behavior so it can be tallied in a more flattering fashion. The […]
Read more...The solar industry is already suffering from significant overcapacity, yet incumbents are adding still more manufacturing to try to secure a cost competitive position after the shakeout. This chart, prepared by Digitimes using data from The Information Network (hat tip reader Michael), sums up the yawning gap between demand and capacity: The Information Network forecasts […]
Read more...From derivatives expert Satyajit Das of Traders, Guns & Money fame: In the 1980s, the Japanese were taking over the world. In the 1990s, it was going to be an ‘Asian’ century. These days the pundits are betting on the ‘Chinese Age’. Like all such glib predictions, despite their superficial appeal, they mask complex undercurrents […]
Read more...It must be lonely being a China bear….particularly for those dubious about its longer term prospects, as opposed to those who might simply think its stock market is a bit ahead of itself even after its recent correction. Vitaliy Katsenelson, in an article at MorningStar, beings almost sounding a tad persecuted before he warms up […]
Read more...Some investors see the Baltic Dry Index, a proxy for the shipping rates for dry bulk cargoes, as an indicator of international trade activity. BDI is admittedly noisy, and so needs to be interpreted along with other information. Chinese imports have been a driving factor in commodities demand, which drives the BDI. The price of […]
Read more...This idea of China being ahead of the game in anything environment protection related probably strikes readers as ironic, given reports of extensive industrial pollution, such as air pollution on a scale that is changing weather patterns, large scale lead poisoning, and cadmium in the soil. As Forbes commented recently, “China: Where Poisoning People Is […]
Read more...This story on Bloomberg, about stockpiling of base metals by Chinese farmers and housewives, highlights a type of speculation that observers in the West haven’t considered deeply. Since these were purchases by individuals, sometimes in the form of scrap, it’s hard to ascertain how significant a factor this activity has been. If nothing else, the […]
Read more...Even though this blog and some others have warned of the vulnerabilty of the greenback to erosion of its reserve currency status, many have dismissed that idea as if it were a lunatic fringe view. Yet pound sterling was once the reserve currency and is no more. Now Pimco has joined the camp of seeing […]
Read more...We’ve been seeing an even higher than usual amount of skepticism on China’s official data releases, as if such a thing were even possible, given the general dim view of Chinese government data. Some observers, including yours truly, had looked to electrical usage as a better barometer of economic activity. Well, it turns out that […]
Read more...Even though China keeps putting out cheery official numbers, its purchases of commodities are down, suggesting there is less to its stabilization than meets the eye. It’s early to say that this is conclusive, but there is a good bit of other anecdotal information and some firmer information raising questions about the true state of […]
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