2/7

the world harder, even as it boosts the Chinese recovery and enables Beijing somewhat to moderate its huge 2020 increase in the country's debt burden.

China's trade surplus was $537 billion for 2020, or 27% above last year's and the second highest ever recorded (after...
3/7

the $594 billion of 2015), but with $370 billion in the past six months, I think this may have been a record six-month trade surplus for China. Without significant structural change, of which there is as yet little evidence, I do not see this surplus disappearing quickly.
4/7

A lot of analysts are explaining the surplus as a consequence of China's economic opening up earlier than the rest of the world, but while this might explain the 3.6% rise in exports in 2020, it does not explain at all the 1.1% contraction in imports, not does it explain...
5/7

why export growth continued so substantially to outpace import growth in recent months. Like with any country, China's export earnings must be recycled, either through the capital account (investment abroad) or the current account (imports), and the fact that a steeply...
6/7

rising share is recycled through the capital account mainly means that the higher export earnings are not being distributed to workers or households.

For structural reasons, in other words, China is converting its export bonanza into savings, something the world has too...
7/7

much of, and not into demand, which the world urgently needs. As I have long argued, anyone who expects that the end of the Trump administration will also bring the end of trade conflict simply does not understand the trade dynamics of the past 10-20 years.
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