Category Archives: China

China: The Trade Surplus That Ate the World

That won’t go anywhere as a horror flick title, but the specter of China’s ever growing trade surpluses is focusing the mind of its trading partners. Some hoped that these surpluses would correct themselves naturally over time as the Chinese population started consuming more and its economy became less dependent on exports. That clearly isn’t […]

Understanding the Chinese Trade Threat

Mark Thoma pointed us to an insightful Washington Post op-ed piece, “China’s Trade Time Bomb,” by Robert Samuelson. He makes the point that trade with China isn’t yet having much impact on the US economy, but soon will be, mainly because they don’t play fair (something we’ve commented on before): It sometimes seems as if […]

Trade: China Doesn’t Play by the Rules

Readers may have taken note about the robust debate among Serious Economists about free trade, provoked in large measure by Harvard economist Dani Rodrik holding some of his peers’ feet to the fire (note that Rodrik is not anti-free trade, but anti sloppy or dumbed down justifications). One continuing bone of contention between economists and […]

Third IPCC Report: Compromised on Arrival

The third installment of this year’s series of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes’ reports is due out Friday. Each successive report becomes more and more politicized, with the upshot that they are less and less valid as scientific pronouncements. China is the heavy in the effort to water down and distort the findings, […]

Critical Chinese Role in Determining Clean Fuel Technology

It seems China is becoming the pivotal player on many fronts. Apologies for being a day late on this story, but we could not access it on the Financial Times website and had to have the text e-mailed. As we have noted before, the proliferation of fuel technologies is slowing widespread adoption of cleaner cars. […]

UN Pushback on Climate Change

Earlier this week, Britan convened a UN Security Council meeting on the issue of global warming, both to galvanize opinion and to discuss the threat it represented to the stability of member nations. The session instead exposed rifts between the first and third world, with developing countries led by China very much opposed to interference. […]

"It is time to pause on free trade"

A provocative article by Jeff Faux at the Economic Policy Institute argues that US trade deficits have become so large and so chronic that we need to put the brakes on further trade liberalization until we get our house in order. And getting our house in order means increasing our domestic savings rate. For those […]

Where Do Wal-Mart Products Come From?

We got this map from Tyler Cowen’s Marginal Revolution, which in turn cites Kottke. In case you had any doubts as to who was the leading outlet for China, Inc., now you know (although some question the methodology, based on my discussions with people who have knowledge of Wal-Mart’s buying practices, I have no doubt […]

WSJ vs. FT on China Trade Row

We have yet another instance of the Journal putting a happier face on the news than the Financial Times, this time on the slowly escalating US-China trade dispute. By way of background, we reported earlier on the US’s imposition of punitive duties on Chinese, Indonesian, and South Korean coated paper because these countries were determined […]

Will the Chinese Stock Market Follow the NASDAQ?

I have long regarded chartism and technical analysis as tantamount to astrology. At the same time, I do know of at least one trader who has made a fortune trading that way (but he professes he waits for multiple, pronounced signals, and makes fewer than 10 trades a year). So I take this chart, from […]

U.S. Imposes Duties on Chinese Goods

Ambrose Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defined an alliance as, “When two thieves have their hands so deeply plunged into each other’s pocket that they cannot separately plunder a third party.” We seem to be in that position with China. The problem is that we’d like to renegotiate our “alliance,” but we are trying to […]

Will Tightening in China Reverberate Around the World?

Many observers overlooked the fact that increases in bank reserve ratios in China and India, which reduce liquidity by curtailing how much banks can gear their equity (and banks are much more important financial players in those markets than in the US) plus a teeny interest rate increase in Japan set the stage for the […]

Links Between China’s Military and Economic Strategy

Robert Reich has an interesting post today, “Why China Announces Military Buildup the Same Week Paulson Visits,” about how China is pursuing inter-related economic and military strategies in its drive to become a superpower. Although much of what Reich says is cogent, I disagree with one point, namely, that “America’s indebtedness to China gives the […]

Trade Dispute Over Chinese Dumping Coated Paper

A New York Times page one story, “A Cry to Limit Chinese Imports Rings at a Troubled Paper Mill,” describes how the Chinese have been gaining market share in the coated paper, by allegedly dumping (selling below cost). Several things make this case unusual: first, likelihood that the Commerce Department will impose duties on Chinese […]