Mr. Welker’s note: The following post was submitted by a former student of mine at Shanghai American School. Marco graduated in 2008, completing the higher level IB Economics program. He now studies Economics and Political Science at McGill University in Canada. The following was written as an assignment for a McGill course, Econ 302: Money, Banking and Government Policy.

When Mr. Welker supervised my Extended Essay in 2008, the US Congress had already started putting pressure on the Chinese to allow their currency to appreciate. The economics of the US trade deficit seemed quite simple: the US bought more Chinese goods than the other way around, resulting in a current account deficit and causing the Yuan to appreciate. In return, the Chinese were in the habit of buying US government bonds, resulting in an American capital account surplus and depreciating the Yuan in relation to the Dollar. In other words, America has a Chinese credit card and the bill is quite large.

For obvious reasons, Congress is not thrilled with the debt. They have long claimed that the Chinese purposefully buy all this debt in order to boost their exports, but that it unfairly drags the US into further debt. The old protectionist tendencies flared and Congress tossed around accusations that Chinese companies maintain sub-American product quality, evidenced by the lead that was found in some toys, among other things. The threat of lead poisoning was a nifty pretense under which more stringent safety regulations could have rid the US market of Chinese goods without explicitly saying that they were doing so. In the end, Congress stuck to labeling China a ‘currency manipulator,’ which Chairman of the Fed Ben Bernanke upheld just a few days ago.

The game changer was the financial crisis. It turned out that the US wasn’t just indebted to China but also to themselves. For example, the price of housing in America had divorced itself from reality and people were purchasing houses that they couldn’t afford, on the assumption that they could sell it later at a higher price. When the housing bubble popped, the bookies came to collect the debt and people had a problem.

The US Federal Reserve responded to the crisis by pumping US$800 billion into the American economy. It has followed up by announcing second cash injection of US$600 billion just a few weeks ago. This is part of a policy called Quantitative Easing (QE), in which the central bank maintains a low interest rate and purchases bonds from the government, financial institutions, insurance companies and pension funds with the objective of creating more credit in the economy.

This is where politics and economics really start to interact. Bernanke has showed the Chinese that is not afraid to create more money. That is, he is not afraid to create more US Dollars. China owns a substantial amount of US Dollars. If the value of the US Dollar falls, then the value of Chinese assets fall, since nearly $2 trillion US dollars and dollar denominated assets are held by the Chinese central bank. The Fed’s increase in the money supply could ultimately cause inflation and a depreciation of the dollar, eroding the value of China’s US$ assets. The Chinese will surely not allow Bernanke to simply inflate away the value of Chinese owned American debt.

In response, the Chinese have been slowly moving out of US Dollars, which is smart. Chinese companies and the government (the distinction is blurred) are showing strong demand for raw materials and commodities. China is buying big in copper, buying big in Africa, buying lots of aluminum, tin, zinc, canola and soybeans, as well. According to J.P. Morgan, China’s iron ore imports were 33 percent higher in April than a year earlier. Crude oil imports were up nearly 14 percent, aluminum oxide imports climbed 16 percent and refined copper imports jumped 148 percent.

The future looks very bright for China, indeed. By recycling its US debt into commodity ownership, China is creating a very nice situation for itself. Commodities are goods of real value and only likely rise in value over time, whereas US debt exists on paper and is subject entirely to the value of the US Dollar. Purchasing abroad reduces the current account surplus, stops the yuan from rising and keeps China’s exports competitive. But, most importantly, having large commodity reserves will safeguard its industrial policy in the future, when the West may find itself in a supply crisis. China may have internal discontents, but it is exceptionally well placed in the international economy.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 22  - “Balance of Payments” of my soon to be published textbook “Pearson Baccalaureate Economics”

If the total spending by a nation’s residents on goods and services imported from the rest of the world exceeds the revenues earned by the nation’s producers from the sale of exports to the rest of the world, the nation is likely experiencing a current account deficit. The situation is not at all uncommon among many of the world’s trading nations. The map belowmap  represents nations by their cumulative current account balances over the years 1980-2008. The red countries all accumulated current account deficits over the three decades, with the largest by far being the United States with a cumulative deficit of $7.3 trillion. The green countries are ones which have had a cumulative surplus in their current accounts, the largest surplus belonging to Japan at $2.7 trillion, followed by China at $1.5 trillion.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cumulative_Current_Account_Balance.png

The top ten current account deficit nations are represented below. It is obvious from this chart that the United States alone accounts for a larger current account deficit then the next nine countries combined. At $7.3 trillion dollars in deficits over 28 years, the US deficit surpasses Spain’s (at number 2) by 1,000 percent.

The consequences of a nation having a current account deficit are not immediately clear. It should be pointed out that it is debatable whether a trade deficit is necessarily a bad thing, in fact. Below we will examine some of the facts about current account deficits, and we will conclude by evaluating the pros and cons for countries that run deficits in the (In macroeconomics): The period of time over which wages and prices are relatively inflexible. A fall in aggregate demand will lead to unemployment and recession in the short-run. Due to the inability of the nation's producers to reduce wages paid to worker, they must lay workers off to reduce costs as demand falls.');" onmouseout="tooltip.hide();">short-run and in the long-run.

Implications of persistent current account deficits: When a country like like those above experience deficits in the current account for year after year, there are some predictable consequences that may have adverse effects on the nation’s macroeconomy. These include currency depreciation, foreign ownership of domestic assets, higher interest rates and foreign indebtedness.

The effect of a current account deficit on the exchange rate: In the previous chapter you learned about the determinants of the exchange rate of a nation’s currency relative to another currency. One of the primary determinants of a currency’s exchange rate is the demand for the nation’s exports relative to the demand for imports from other countries. With this in mind, we can examine the likely effects of a current account deficit on a nation’s currency’s exchange rate. Additionally, we will see that under a floating exchange rate system, deficits in the current account should be automatically corrected due to adjustments in exchange rates.

When households and firms in one nation demand more of other countries’ output than the rest of the world demands of theirs, there is upward pressure on the value of trading partners’ currencies and downward pressure on the importing nation’s currency. In this way, a movement towards a current account deficit should cause the deficit country’s currency to weaken.

As an illustration, say that New Zealand’s imports from Japan begin to rise due to rising incomes in New Zealand and the corresponding increase in demand for imports. Assuming Japan’s demand for New Zealand’s output does not change, New Zealand will move towards a deficit in its current account and Japan towards a surplus. In the foreign exchange market, demand for Japanese yen will rise while the supply of NZ$ in Japan increases, as seen above, depreciating the NZ$.

The downward pressure on exchange rates resulting from an increase in a nation’s current account deficit should have a self-correcting effect on the trade imbalance. As the NZ$ weakens relative to its trading partners’ currencies, consumers in New Zealand will start to find imports more and more expensive, while consumers abroad will, over time, begin to find products from New Zealand cheaper. In this way, a flexible exchange rate system should, in the long-run, eliminate surpluses and deficits between nations in the current account. The persistence of global trade imbalances illustrated in the map above is evidence that in reality, the ability of flexible exchange rates to maintain balance in nations’ current accounts is quite limited.

Foreign ownership of domestic assets: By definition, the balance of payments must always equal zero. For this reason, a deficit in the current account must be offset by a surplus in the capital and financial accounts. If the money spent by a deficit country on goods from abroad ends up in the does not end up returning to the deficit country for the purchase of goods and services, it will be re-invested into the county through foreign acquisition of domestic real and financial assets, or held in reserve by surplus nations’ central banks.

Essentially, a country with a large current account deficit, since it cannot export enough goods and services to make up for its spending on imports, instead ends up “exporting ownership” of its financial and real assets. This could take the form of foreign direct investment in domestic firms, increased portfolio investment by foreigners in the domestic economy, and foreign ownership of domestic government debt, or the build up of foreign reserves of the deficit nation’s currency.

The effect on interest rates: A persistent deficit in the current account can have adverse effects on the interest rates and investment in the deficit country. As explained above, a current account deficit can put downward pressure on a nation’s exchange rate, which causes inflation in the deficit country as imported goods, services and raw materials become more expensive. In order to prevent massive currency depreciation, the country’s central bank may be forced to tighten the money supply and raise domestic interest rates to attract foreign investors and keep demand for the currency and the exchange rate stable. Additionally, since a current account deficit must be offset by a financial account surplus, the deficit country’s government may need to offer higher interest rates on government bonds to attract foreign investors. Higher borrowing rates for the government and the private sector can slow domestic investment and economic growth in the deficit nation.

Side note: While the interest rate effect of a large current account deficit should be negative (i.e. causing interest rates to rise in the deficit country), in recent years the country with the largest trade deficit, the United States, has actually experienced record low interest rates even while maintaining persistent current account deficits. This can be understood by examining by the macroeconomic conditions of the US and global economies, in which deflation posed a greater threat than inflation over the years 2008-2010. The fear of deflation combined with low confidence in the private sector among international investors has kept demand for US government bonds high even as the US trade deficit has grown, allowing the US government and central bank to keep interest rates low and continue to attract foreign investors.

Whereas under “normal” macroeconomic conditions a build up of US dollars among America’s trading partners would require the US to raise interest rates to create an incentive for foreign investors to re-invest that money into the US economy, in the environment of uncertainty and low confidence in the private sector that has prevailed over the last several years, America’s trading partners have been willing to finance its current account deficit at record low interest rates.

The effect on indebtedness: A large current account deficit is synonymous with a large financial account surplus. One source of credits in the financial account is foreign ownership of domestic government bonds (i.e. debt). When a central bank from another nation buys government bonds from a nation with which it has a large current account surplus, the deficit nation is essentially going into debt to the surplus nation. For instance, as of August 2010, the Chinese central bank held $868 billion of United States Treasury Securities (government bonds) on its balance sheet. In total, the amount of US debt owned by foreign nations in 2010 was $4.2 trillion, or around 50% of the country’s total national debt and 30% of its GDP.source: http://www.ustreas.gov/tic/mfh.txt

On the one hand, foreign lending to a deficit nation is beneficial because it keeps demand for government bonds high and interest rates low, which allows the deficit country’s government to finance its budget without raising taxes on domestic households and firms. On the other hand, every dollar borrowed from a foreigner has to be repaid with interest. Interest payments on the national debt cost US taxpayers over $400 billion in 2010, making up around 10% of the federal budget. Nearly half of this went to foreign holders of US debt, meaning almost $200 billion of US taxpayer money was handed over to foreign interests, without adding a single dollar to aggregate demand in the US.

The opportunity cost of foreign owned national debt is the public goods and services that could have been provided with the money that instead is owed in interest to foreign creditors. If the US current account were more balanced, foreign countries like China would not have the massive reserves of US dollars to invest in government debt in the first place, and the taxpayer money going to pay interest on this debt could instead be invested in the domestic economy to promote economic growth and development.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why would a large current account deficit cause a nation’s currency to depreciate? How could a weaker currency automatically reduce a nation’s current account deficit?
2. Why should governments be concerned about a large trade deficit? What is one policy a government could implement to reduce a deficit in the current account?
3. Would a nation with a large trade deficit be better off without trade at all? Why or why not?
4. Discuss the validity of the following claim: “Americans buy tons of Chinese imports, but the Chinese don’t buy anything from America, this is why the US has such a huge trade deficit with China”. To what extent is this claim true or false?

This post was originally published on September 15, 2009. It is being reposted today for my year 2 IB Econ students, who are studying free trade and protectionism as part of Unit 4 of the IB Econ course.

US president Barack Obama made a speech directly to Wall Street today. In his speech, Obama reflected on the many lessons America has learned in the last year since the financial crisis began. He urged his audience of investors, bankers and brokers that

“Normalcy cannot lead to complacency,” Obama said. “Unfortunately, there are some in the financial industry who are misreading this moment. Instead of learning the lessons of Lehman and the crisis from which we are still recovering, they are choosing to ignore them.”

“They do so not just at their own peril, but at our nation’s,” the president added.

In addition to his warnings about the threat posed by overly risky financial markets to the US economy, President Obama expressed his commitment to free trade and “the fight against protectionism”.

Obama says:

…enforcing trade agreements is part and parcel of maintaining an open and free trading system.

The enforcement of existing trade agreements Obama refers to is his way of justifying a decision his administration made over the weekend that actually limits free trade between America and one of its largest trading partners, China.

Trade relations between two of the world’s biggest economies deteriorated after Barack Obama, US president, signed an order late on Friday to impose a new duty of 35 per cent on Chinese tyre imports on top of an existing 4 per cent tariff.

In his first big test on world trade since taking office in January, Mr Obama sided with America’s trade unions, which have complained that a “surge” in imports of Chinese-made tyres had caused 7,000 job losses among US factory workers.

So, in his speech today, Obama decries protectionism and calls for expanded trade and free trade agreements which are “absolutely essential to our economic future”. But only three days ago, he supported a blatantly protectionist measure aimed at keeping foreign produced goods out of America in order to save a few thousand American jobs.

Obama’s decision is a bad one for several reasons. As an economics teacher, I will turn firstly to a diagram for an illustration of the net loss to the American people of higher tariffs on imported tires:

The key point to notice in the above graph is that a tariff on imported tires results in a net loss of welfare in America. The blue area represents the increase in the welfare of tire manufactures (this could be interpreted as the jobs saved in the tire industry and the profits earned due to higher prices); the black areas, on the other hand, are welfare loss. Since all tire consumers in America pay more for their tires due to the 35% tariff, real income is affected negatively for the nation as a whole.

One effect of the protectionist policy the graph does not illustrate, and perhaps the most serious negative impact of the tariff on America, is the response the Chinese are likely to take to what they interpret as a violation of existing free trade agreements between the US and China.

“This is a grave act of trade protectionism,” Mr Chen said in a statement. “Not only does it violate WTO rules, it contravenes commitments the US government made at the [April] G20 financial summit.”

Beijing said it had requested WTO-sanctioned consultations with the US over Washington’s new duties on tyres. Yao Jian, a commerce ministry spokesman, said the duties were in ”violation of WTO rules”.

China said it would now investigate imports of US poultry and vehicles, responding to complaints from domestic companies.

The problems with protectionism are myriad. Clearly American consumers suffer through higher tire prices. In addition, Chinese manufacturers will see sales fall as their product becomes less competitive in the US market. According to the CCTV report below, as many as 9,000 workers in the Chinese tire industry will lose their livelihoods due to declining demand from the US. But the unforseen effects of the US tariff on Chinese tires is the retaliatory measures China will almost certainly take. If China imposes new tariffs on American automobiles and poultry, the scenario in the graph above will be reversed, and Chinese consumers will face higher prices, Chinese car and poultry producers will experience rising sales, while the American auto worker and chicken farmer will suffer.

Free trade tends to result in net benefits for economies that choose to participate in it. American tire manufacturers are certainly harmed by cheap Chinese imports; however, America as a whole benefits through cheaper goods, more consumer surplus, higher incomes in China and therefore greater demand for imports of products made in America. The road to protectionism is a dangerous path to take for the Obama administration. Justifying these new tariffs by claiming that they “enforce existing free trade agreements” is a political maneuver aimed at covering up the truth, which is that the Obama administration has sided with a special interest group to save a few thousand jobs and garner political favor at a time when 700,000 American jobs are being lost each month. By doing so, he is calling into question his own commitment to free trade, and harming America’s image as a global proponent of global economic integration.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why is the Chinese government so upset about a new tax on such an insignificant product as automobile tires?
2. “Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty”: Do you agree?
3. Some would say that it is a small price to pay for Americans to face higher prices for one product like tires in order to “save” 7,000 Americans’ jobs. Would you agree? Why or why not?
4. If 7,000 Americans were to lose their jobs due to free trade with China, what would we call the type of unemployment experienced by these workers? Is this the same type of unemployment experienced by the 700,000 workers who have lost their jobs each month during the last year of recession in the United States?

China rations diesel as record oil hits supplies | Markets | Reuters

In the fall of 2007 I was living in Shanghai, China. At the time, oil prices were hitting record levels world wide, leading to rising petrol prices for drivers in most places.  However, at the time,  I began witnesing an unusual site on my taxi rides into the city of Shanghai: as our taxi passed petrol station after petrol station, I observed dozens of blue trucks (the ubiquitous medium of transporting good from Shanghai’s factories to her ports) spilling out of gas station parking lots into the road, apparently queued, waiting for a spot at the pump. I had never seen such long lines at any of the petrol stations around Shanghai before, and I began to wonder as to the reasons for these crazy long lines!

Well, an article at the time helped solve the riddle of the long lines. As it turns out, there was a simple explanation rooted in the principles of supply and demand that any first semester AP or IB economics student would understand! The Chinese government had been forced to ration petrol (limiting the amount that a driver can buy at one go) due to the shortages resulting from the government’s price controls in the petrol market.

Truck drivers reported long queues at petrol stations along a national highway linking Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, with each truck getting 100 yuan ($13) worth of diesel, or around 20 litres, per visit at a state-run station and 40 litres at a private kiosk…

“What’s wrong with the oil market? Our drivers had to queue the whole night for only a small amount of fill, slowing the traffic by almost one day,” said Gao Meili, who manages a logistics company.

China is a major importer of oil. With an economy growing around 12% in 2007, much of the country’s growth depended on the availability of crude oil at reasonable prices, which China’s oil refining firms turn into diesel and petrol, needed to get Chinese manufactured products from factory to port and from port to overseas consumers.

The problem with the oil market in China, however, was that as “Chinese refiners cannot pass the souring crude costs on to consumers.” Oil is an input needed to make a finished product, diesel. As the price of oil rose in 2007 (it reached a record of $92 per barrel in October of that year), the resource costs to petrol and diesel producers also rose, shifting the supply of petrol and diesel to the left, putting upward pressure on the equilibrium price.   As a first semester AP or IB student knows, resource costs are a determinant of supply, and as oil (the main resource in the production of petrol and diesel) increased in price, the supply of these important commodities invariably decreased.

In a free market, a decrease in supply leads to an increase in price. Herein lies the answer to the riddle of the long lies at petrol stations in Shanghai: the Chinese petrol and diesel market is not a free market. The government plays an active role in controlling prices paid by consumers for the finished product refiners are producing, petrol fuel:

Beijing fears stoking already high inflation and rigidly caps pump fuel rates to shield users from a 50 percent rally in global oil so far this year.

As the costs to petrol and diesel producers rose in 2007, the government in Beijing took the side of consumers and forbade fuel producers from raising the price they charge consumers.  The Chinese government essentially imposed a price ceiling in the market for petrol. A price ceiling is a maximum price set by a government aimed at helping consumers by keeping essential commodities like fuel affordable. As we have learned this week in AP and IB Economics, price controls such as this end up hurting BOTH producers AND consumers, since they only lead to a dis-equilibrium in the market in which the quantity demanded for a product rises while the quantity supplied by firms falls. The shortage of petrol and diesel resulting from the government’s price control are the perfect explanation for the long lines of blue trucks and motor scooters at all the gas stations in Shanghai during October of 2007.

So why, exactly, does the government’s enforcement of a lower than equilibrium price result in such severe shortages that truck drivers are only allowed to pump 20 litres of petrol per visit and made to wait hours each time they need to refill? Below is a supply and demand diagram that illustrates the situation in the Chinese fuel market in 2007:

In the graph above, the supply of petrol has decreased due to the increasing cost of the main resource that goes into petrol, oil. This decrease in supply means petrol has become more scarce, and correspondingly the equilibrium price should rise. However, due to the government’s intervention in the petrol and diesel markets, the price was not allowed to rise and instead remained at the maximum price of Pc.

At the government-mandated maximum price of Pc, the quantity of fuel demanded by drivers far exceeds the quantity supplied by China’s petrol producers. The result is a shortage of petrol equal to Qd-Qs.

The government’s intention for keeping petrol prices low is clear: to make consumers happy and keep the costs of transportation among China’s manufacturers low so as to not risk a slow-down in economic growth in China. However, the net effect of the price controls is a loss of total welfare in the petrol market. Notice the colored areas in the graph above. These represent the effect on welfare (consumer and producer surplus) of the price control.

• The total areas of the green, orange and grey shapes represent the total amount of consumer and producer surplus in the petrol market assuming there were NO price controls. At a price of Pe, the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied are equal (at Qe) and the consumer surplus and producer surplus are maximized. The market is efficient at a price of Pe. Neither shortages nor surpluses of petrol exist.
• However, at a price of Pc (the maximum price set by the government), the amount of petrol actually produced and consumed in the market is only Qs. Clearly, those who are able to buy petrol are better off, because they paid a lower price than they would have to without the price ceiling. But notice that there is a huge shortage of fuel now; many people who are willing and able to buy petrol at Pc simply cannot get the quantity they demand, because firms are simply not producing enough!
• The total consumer surplus changes to the area below the demand curve and above Pc, but only out to Qs. The green area represents the consumer surplus after the price control. It is not at all obvious whether or not consumers are actually better off with the price ceiling.
• The total producer surplus clearly shrinks to the orange triangle below Pc and above the supply curve. Petrol producers are definitely worse off due to the government’s action.
• So how is the market as a whole affected? The black triangle represents the net welfare loss of the government’s price control. Notice that with a price of Pe, the black triangle would be added to consumer and producer surplus, but with a disequilibrium in the market at Pc, the black triangle is welfare lost to society.

Price controls by government’s clearly have an intended purpose of helping either consumers (in the case of a maximum price or price ceiling) or producers (in the case of a minimum price or price floor).  But the effect is always predictable from an economist’s perspective. A price set by a government above or below the equilibrium price will always lead to either a shortage or a surplus of the product in question. In addition, there will always be a loss of total welfare resulting from price controls, meaning that society as a whole is worse off than it would be without government intervention.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why has the supply of petrol decreased?
2. With a fall in supply of a commodity like petrol, does the demand change, or the quantity demanded? What is the difference?
3. Define “consumer surplus” and “producer surplus”. Why does a government’s control of prices reduce the total welfare of consumers and producers in a market like petrol?
4. How would a government subsidy to petrol producers provide a more desirable solution to the high oil prices than the maximum price described in this post? In your notes, sketch a new market diagram for petrol and show the effects on supply, demand, price and quantity of a government subsidy to petrol producers. Does a subsidy create a loss of welfare? Why or why not?

When teaching international trade to high school economics students, one of the challenges is understanding the pros and cons of trade surpluses and deficits. A country’s balance of trade refers to the net flow of revenues and expenditures goods and services between the country and its trading partners. In technical terms, this is known as the current account on a nation’s balance of payments. A country that spends more on imports than it earns from the sale of exports has a current account deficit. A nation that earns more from the sale of its goods and services to the rest of the world than it spends on imports has a current account surplus.

A common impressions among students is that a trade surplus is good and a trade deficit is bad. One challenge I face in teaching this topic is separating economic terms such as “suplus” and “deficit” from non-economic, normative concepts such as “good” and “bad”. In fact, a trade surplus is not always a good thing. To illustrate, I will look at the current account balances between China and the United States. In 2007, the US ran a trade deficit with China of $258 billion. While the US imported $321 billion of Chinese goods and services, it only earned $63 billion from the sale of exports to China. To most students, it would appear that China is “winning” in the game of trade, since it has such an enormous trade surplus with the United States. This, however, is not necessarily the case.

One way of looking at trade balances is that a nation with a substantial current account surplus is actually consuming less of its own output due to the high demand from abroad. As mentioned above, in 2007 Americans spent $321 billion on Chinese goods and services. China only produced $3.2 trillion of goods and services that year, meaning Americans actually consumed over 10% of the stuff produced in China! This represents Chinese output that is NOT being consumed by the Chinese. Additionally, since China imported far less from abroad than it sold, Chinese output being consumed abroad is far from made up for by Chinese consumption of foreign output. While this may sound like a good deal from the perspective of producers, who have a larger market due to trade, from the perspective of Chinese households it means they are consuming less than they are producing as a nation!

One of the goals of macroeconomics is to increase the standards of living of the nation’s people through an increase in the consumption of goods and services. In this regard trade deficit countries are actually better off than trade surplus countries, since they are actually consuming MORE than they are producing as a nation! A trade deficit country gets more than it gives, in a way, which sounds pretty good when if you consider total consumption to be an end in itself. A trade surplus country, on hte other hand, gives the rest of the world more than it gets in return (in terms of goods and services, that is).

Another consequence of running a large trade surplus is the build up of foreign exchange reserves. China, for instance, held over $1.3 trillion USD in its central bank in 2007, representing an enormous level of savings for the Chinese people, since these are dollars earned by the people of China (from their export sales to America), but not spent. These reserves represent a form of forced savings on the people of the nation.

The average Chinese consumer is also made worse off because the governments’ US dollar reserves are held intentionally to keep the value of the dollar high, thereby keeping the price of American and other nation’s imports prohibitively high for Chinese consumers. In this regard, China’s 50% national savings rate is a form of financial tyranny by the government perpetrated against the Chinese people, who, as consumers, would be much better off if the RMB were allowed to appreciate and imported goods and services could be more easily and affordably attained by Chinese households. Employment in the export sector might suffer but falls in exports would likely be made up for with gains in domestic consumption, meaning the overall effect on employment is likely to be mild upon a reductions in China’s trade surplus.

Furthermore, in order to maintain China’s trade surplus the Chinese government must keep the RMB weak. As already mentioned, one way it does this is by holding its US dollar reserves to keep the supply of dollars on foreign exchange markets low and its value high. Another way the Chinese central bank manipulates its currency is by constantly changing the level of interest rates to limit or encourage foreign capital flows into or out of the country, since such flows affect the Chinese currency’s value. If the Chinese central bank and government were to adopt a flexible exchange rate policy, which would help reduce the country’s trade surplus with the United States, this would allow the central bank to use monetary policy in the way it is meant to be used: to stimulate or contract the level of domestic consumption and investment. This week US Fed chairman Ben Bernanke spoke to the US Senate about China’s exchange rate controls, and made a similar point:

“Most economists agree the Chinese currency is undervalued and has been used to promote a more export-oriented economy. I think it would be good for the Chinese to allow more flexibility in their exchange rate.”

Letting its currency, the renminbi, appreciate would give China’s central bank more flexibility in monetary policy and help stimulate domestic demand and consumption, Mr. Bernanke said

China’s trade surplus does not necessarily benefit the country as a whole. Surpluses do keep export sector employment high, but result in a lower overall level of consumption among Chinese households and impose a higher than necessary level of savings on the nation. More balanced trade would increase the level of imported goods and services in China, increase real incomes as the value of the nation’s currency rises, and also allow for more inflows of foreign capital from abroad, further stimulating growth in China’s domestic economy.

Discussion Questions:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages for the United States of its large current account deficit?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages for China of its large current account surplus?
3. What benefits would China experience if its currency, the RMB, appreciated against the dollar? What negative consequences would this have for China?
4. Why does China’s large holdings of US dollars and US government debt represent a form of “forced saving” imposed by the Chinese government on the people of China?
5. Would you rather live in a country with a current account surplus or a current account deficit? Why?

It’s that time of the year for IB Economics students all over the world. Time to choose their extended essay topics! The International Baccalaureate (IB) program is a rigorous, two-year diploma program for 11th and 12th graders. In addition two three “higher level” courses and three “standard level” courses chosen from each of the six subject areas (maths, physical sciences, social sciences, fine arts, language A and language B), students must also complete a major research project over the two year program. This “extended essay” is externally assessed and counts towards their points and their final diploma score.

As an IB Economics teacher, it is my duty to assist students who choose to write an economics extended essay. This year I will supervise four Zurich International School students, who will be researching topics ranging from the competitive nature of the local fast food market, to Malaysia’s economic policy and the country’s development, to the health insurance industry in Switzerland and Brazil’s coffee market. Helping students fine tune their research topics and refine their essay is an exciting and rewarding process.

This afternoon I received an email from an IB Economics student in Berlin. Here’s what she had to say:

Dear Mr.Welker :

I’m currently an IB Grade 11 student studying at Berlin International School, and i would like to write my extended essay in Economics. Your blog has provided me with so many ideas now that the problems is now i don’t know what to choose or how to narrow it down . My ideas are mainly focusing on China’s economy, because I’m from Taiwan, I thought it would be an advantage for me, since i can understand information if it was written in Chinese.

I’m thinking of writing about the following topics:

• Limiting factors of China’s economic expansion (inequality, inflation, protectionism from other countries like US, spending and saving habits of the Chinese, export and import) and maybe the possible future of China’s economy, because while some people say it’s going to help lift the global economy out of recession, some say they see an economic crash.( but I’m not sure if as a high school student is able to do that, at the same time I think one of the criterias is to discover something new ? )
• Another thing i also find interesting is about Chinese currency and how it might solve inflation (I came across this from one of your blog posts about China at May 2008) or what policies do governments use to maintain RMB without buying US exports and the possible effects on other countries as a result of weak Chinese currency

I really can’t decide which one to do, therefore i would really appreciate it if you could advice me and give me some feedbacks.

Looking forward to your responses !

I was happy to receive an email from such an enthusiastic young economist. Below is my response and advice to the student:

Hello,

Your ideas are very interesting… it’s impressive as an IB Econ teacher to see a student as thoughtful and reflective on the EE topic as you are. Here are my thoughts on your proposed topics:

I think your first topic would be particularly difficult to research and write a good essay on. In all honesty, not many of the factors that you identify (inequality, inflation, protectionism from other countries like US, spending and saving habits of the Chinese, export and import) have really limited China’s economic growth. China’s growth has been unprecedented in the world in modern history. Inequality could be viewed as a result of the rapid growth the country has experienced; such inequality has been experienced in many countries during their early stages of economic development. Inflation is also a symptom of rapid growth, but in most cases China has keep inflation under control. It has been the lack of protectionism from countries like the US which have led to the massive growth of China’s export industry. If anything, China’s own protectionist policy of managing the value of the RMB at such a low rate has also contributed to its rapid growth.

Even Chinese spending and savings habits have contributed to the growth of the country’s economy. A high savings rate enables the Chinese government to tap the country’s savings to buy US government bonds, which keeps interest rates low in America, the dollar strong, and helps finance the US government’s budget deficits, meaning lower taxes and more disposable income among American consumers who turn around and import hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods every year, further fueling growth in China. With a lower savings rate, China would experience fewer net exports. On the other hand, they’d experience more domestic consumption, which is probably what we should expect to see in the future if Beijing begins to loosens its control of the RMB and allows it to strengthen. Chinese will then begin consuming more of their own output and buying more imports from abroad, while net exports decrease in response to the rising prices of Chinese goods in the west. Domestic consumption will begin to replace exports as domestic savings decreases.

I like your second proposal much better. Since you are in Germany, I would consider researching the effects of China’s exchange rate controls on a particular industry in which both German and Chinese firms compete. I had a student in Shanghai who had a similar background to yours; he was of Chinese descent, but born in Germany. He spoke both German and Mandarin. He researched the impact of China’s low cost automobile parts manufacturers on the German auto parts and automobile industries. He did not focus exclusively on the exchange rate, but it was part of his research.

The IB really likes when you research local markets. If you examine the impact of the weak RMB on, say, US net exports, it’s not nearly as impressive as if you focus your investigation on German firms. You may have friends at your school whose parents work for firms who do business with or compete against Chinese firms. Interview them! You could measure historical exchange rate data between the RMB and the Euro, explain the mechanism by which China manages its currency against the US dollar but then explain how that also affects exchange rates with the Euro, then examine the impact on exports and imports from Germany to China and vis versa in response to the fluctuations of the RMB/Euro exchange rate. America is not the only country that wants China to let the RMB float. Europe’s exports are also affected by the weak RMB.

So that’s my suggestion. Take your two homes (well, not really as you’re Taiwanese, but close enough!) and focus on them. Choose one or two industries that exist in Germany AND China, and research the effects of free trade, China’s entry to the WTO, China’s exchange rate policies, and so on, to draw conclusions about how China’s entry to the global economy has affected firms in Germany.

Good luck, I hope this helps! Click on the “China” category on my blog to find all the dozens of articles I’ve written about China over the last three years!

Best,
Mr Welker

Obamas Efforts To Boost Exports Face Hurdles : NPR

President Obama thinks the key to recovering the millions of American jobs lost during the recession lies in boosting exports to the rest of the world:

The plan sounds great. As we learn in AP and IB Economics, free trade leads to benefits for nations that choose to participate in it. Of course, promoting free trade will harm some industries and workers whose jobs end up being “off-shored” or “out-sourced” to countries with cheaper or more qualified labor; but Obama’s hope is that promoting free trade will result in a net gain of 2 million American jobs.

The goal of doubling US exports in 5 years, however, may be overly ambitious. According to the CIA World Factbook, the US is currently the fourth largest exporter in the world, sending just around $1 trillion worth of goods and services abroad in 2009, behind the EU with $1.9 trillion, China with $1.2 trillion and Germany with $1.18 trillion of exports. Obama’s goal to double US exports would propel the US to the single largest exporting nation in the world, putting it right around where the 27 nations of the European Union are today.

To achieve his goal, Obama proposals include three strategies for boosting demand and supply of US exports.

• On the supply side he suggests continuing recent guarantees for payment by foreign buyers. Essentially such a scheme reduces the risks that often accompany international commerce, reducing the “costs” of exporting firms, which in essence increases the supply of exports from the US.
• On the demand side the US must pressure China to revalue its currency. A stronger RMB (and a weaker dollar) will increase China’s demand for US goods and services.
• Also on the demand side, the US should push through free trade agreements with South Korea, Panama and Columbia, which have encountered obstacles among US lawmakers who fear that more free trade may actually mean a loss of US jobs.

Free trade agreements, export payment guarantees and a weaker US dollar in China will help Obama reach his goal. Chances are, however, that it will ultimately be unattainable. Doubling US exports would propel the US to the top of the list of exporting countries, surpassing even China, today’s current leader, by $700 billion more than the country exported last year. The impact on US GDP would undoubtedly be enormous, adding upwards of  $1 trillion to the US economy.

Creating jobs through trade is controversial, as many Americans still believe trade is partially to blame for the loss of American jobs in recent years.

“The average voter in the U.S. has been pretty on the fence about whether they want more trade coming into the United States,” Slaughter says. “The income pressures that a lot of households have faced in recent years have sort of shifted that balance where more voters now are a lot more wary of globalization than they used to be.”

While his goal is lofty, Obama is on the right track towards growing the US economy and promoting job creation. Trade benefits Americans not just because it will increase demand for our goods and services abroad, but because it will lead to lower prices for many of the things we enjoy consuming at home, ultimately increasing real incomes in America while also creating jobs.

The graph below presents a simple explanation of how the above strategies can result in more jobs in US export industries.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does China manipulate the value of its currency? Why is such manipulation harmful to US exporters?
2. How does a government payment guarantee for exporters actually reduce the costs of doing business for US exporting firms?
3. Do you believe that more free trade agreements with countries like South Korea and Panama will create jobs or destroy jobs in the United States? Explain.

YouTube - Chinas empty city – 10 Nov 09.

My buddy living in Shanghai posted this video to his Facebook profile today. It demonstrates how misaligned incentives in China lead local government officials to launch massive government infrastructure projects, all with the goal of meeting the growth targets handed down from Beijing.

Building roads to nowhere and cities that stand empty certainly creates jobs and new spending by the workers employed in their construction, so in that regard at least one goal of such projects is achieved. But whether or not all growth is good growth depends on whether efficiency in the economy is increase or decreased as a result of the growth strategies used.

Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of resources in China are currently being allocated by the government in Beijing towards massive public works projects such as this sparkling new city in remote Inner Mongolia. But it seems that government plans don’t always fall in line with the wishes of the nation’s people. A wise man once said, “build it… and they will come.” Apparently in China, that’s not always true.

I happen to have traveled in Inner Mongolia a few years ago with a group of students from my school in Shanghai. It was a sad thing in my opinion to witness the rampant development of the once pristine and culturally rich Inner Mongolian steppes. Ethnic Mongolians had been put on large reservations (not unlike the Native American people 150 years ago) and turned into tourist attractions. The cities were populated almost entirely with ethnic Han Chinese, there for the purpose of building more new cities, mining raw materials, and selling them to the rest of China’s industries.

Fiscal policy (the use of government spending and taxes to stimulate or reduce the overall level of demand in an economy) is a powerful tool for achieving the macroeconomic goals of full-employment, economic growth and price level stability. When used effectively, government spending can also improve efficiency in an economy by allocating society’s scarce resources towards socially and economically valuable projects. In China, it appears, the government’s incentives are aimed more towards pleasing the higher ups and continuing to inflate the speculative  bubble in real estate that has almost certainly formed, rather than pursuing socially desirable and allocatively efficient projects that actually help the Chinese people. Damn shame!

Discussion Questions:

1. What type of fiscal policy is the government in China pursuing? Expansionary or contractionary? What is the difference?
2. Why is government spending sometimes less efficient than private sector spending?
3. What would have been an alternative policy to allocating over $220 billion of public money into infrastructure projects that may have resulted in a more efficient allocation of China’s resources than projects such as the “empty city” in the video above?

Swine flu fear leads to shortage of garlic in China – Telegraph.

My colleague this morning happened to ask if I had heard about the garlic bubble in China. A quick news search led me to the story:

Garlic prices have increased fifteen fold in China in under a year because Chinese investors are said to be attempting to create an artificial shortage and drive up prices.

Chefs and housewives in some cities are struggling to get hold of one of the nation’s favourite ingredients, which has passed gold and oil to become the China’s best-performing asset.

Several factors have led to the “garlic bubble” in China. Firstly, low prices of garlic last year:

Falling garlic prices last year have contributed to the shortage with many farmers discouraged from planting the crop again…

To compound the problem, supplies of garlic have been further reduced due to speculation. Yes, speculators are hoarding warehouses full of garlic to drive price up in the face of rising demand. Chinese believe that garlic has medicinal properties and is therefore a remedy for swine flu. This year’s unusually high level of demand is attributable to the flu epidemic and Chinese desire to consume more garlic to fend off the illness.

The result of all these combined factors is illustrated below. The low prices in 2008 led to farmers to cut back on production, reducing supply to S2009normal. What the farmers did not predict, however, is the rise in demand due to swine flu. The reduced supply is exacerbated by speculators buying up output and warehousing it, shifting supply further left to S2009w/speculation.

As can be seen, prices have risen, but shortages persist. It should be expected, therefore, that prices will continue to rise until the shortages are eliminated. On the other hand, the speculators may begin to release their hoarded supplies, shifting supply outward and restoring equilibrium closer to the current price.

A third possibility is that the swine flu epidemic will subside and demand will return to a normal level. This, of course, would spell doom for speculators who put millions of RMB into garlic who would then find themselves with “assets” that had lost their value. This would mean the proverbial “bursting of the bubble”. This final possibility seems unlikely anytime soon, for among the Chinese, traditional beliefs run deep, and with the lack of widespread access to a swine flu vaccine, garlic will likely remain the remedy of choice for the country’s masses.

FT.com | The Economists’ Forum | Imbalances and undervalued exchange rates: Rehabilitating Keynes

In our year 2 IB Economics class, we are beginning the part of our International Trade unit on exchange rates and the balance of trade . While the market for a particular currency reflects many of the same characteristics as a product market (i.e. upward sloping supply curve, downward sloping demand curve), the consequences of a change the price of a currency (the exchange rate) is far more powerful than a change in the price of a particular good or service in a product market.

How does the value of a country’s currency affect that country’s balance of trade with other countries? To understand this important concept, we first need to know something about the process by which currencies are exchanged when two countries trade. Let’s look at an example:

When an American consumer wants to buy an iPod that was made in China she will have to pay for it in US dollars, since that’s what she earns her wages in from selling her labor in the resource market. Apple now has the consumer’s $300, which gets split up to cover all the costs the company faced in the manufacture, distribution, marketing and sale of the iPod. Part of that $300 (say $100) will go to the manager of the factory in China where it was made.

The factory manager in Shanghai faces his own costs he must cover. He must pay rent on his factory space, interest on the loans he took out to acquire capital, and wages to the workers assembling iPods on his factory floor. The problem is, these costs are all in Chinese yuan, but he’s holding the US dollars that Apple paid him for his iPod. In order to cover his costs, the Chinese factory owner must take the $100 to a Chinese bank and swap it for RMB. The local bank that changes his money now hands the $100 over to China’s central bank (the PBOC) which prints and exchanges RMB to the bank at whatever the prevailing exchange rate is at the time.

Ultimately, China’s central bank will decide what to do with its holding of US dollars. Most of the dollars are loaned back to the United States through China’s purchase of US Treasury securities (the IOUs the US government sells to finance its deficits). China’s voracious demand for US dollar denominated assets keeps the demand for (and the the value of) dollars high on foreign exchange markets, meaning the RMB remains relatively cheap for Americans and therefore Chinese manufactured goods attractive.

China’s policy of exchange rate manipulation has upset many American politicians over the years, who often blame China for America’s shrinking manufacturing sector. A weak RMB means the cost of producing things like iPods in China is far lower than it would be in the US. By keeping demand for dollars high on the foreign exchange markets through its incessant demand for US treasury securities and other financial and real assets, while simultaneously hoarding vast reserves of US dollars in its central bank, thus keeping supply of dollars on foreign exchange markets low (see graph), China has prevented the RMB from appreciating, fueling the growth of the country’s export-manufacturing sector.

China’s currency manipulations may soon ilicit a response from the United States as president-elect Barack Obama takes office next year. Facing a recession and rising unemployment, combined with the recent appreciation of the US dollar, the pressure is on Obama to take immediate action to restore America’s manufacturing sector. According to the Financial Times blog “the Economists’ Forum”:

If the US economy takes a downturn and the dollar continues to strengthen, a resurgence of protectionist pressures is likely. This time around, these pressures could well take the form of unilateral action against competitive currencies. It is noteworthy that President-elect Obama has actively and repeatedly supported action against “currency manipulation.”

The “competitive currency” perceived to pose the greatest threat to America’s inustrial sector is certainly the Chinese RMB. Currency manipulation is a form of protectionism, which in a time of global economic slowdowns poses a larger threat than ever to both developed and developing nations’ economies alike. For this reason, the World Trade Organization may need to employ carrot and stick methods to create incentives for China to liberalize its currency controls and allow the RMB to strengthan against the dollar and other major currencies:

How would this new rule against undervalued exchange rates be incorporated in the WTO? Through negotiation. The (WTO) should place rules on undervalued exchange rates…. The US and EU have been the principal demandeurs for action by China in the past. But it is important to remember that until very recently, a number of developing countries—Brazil, Mexico, Korea, Turkey and South Africa—were affected by the competitive pressure from the undervalued (RMB). Indeed, some months ago, the Indian Prime Minister urged China to follow a more market-based exchange rate policy. For obvious reasons, more emerging market countries have not voiced their concerns, but it is possible that a coalition of affected countries could unite on this issue.

Clearly, Chinese concerns have to be addressed for any new rules to be crafted and commonly agreed… First, China’s major trading partners could pledge granting China the status of a “market economy” in the WTO contingent on it eliminating currency undervaluation and moving to a market-based system. This status would have significant value for China by shielding it against unilateral trade actions such as anti-dumping and countervailing duties by trading partners. Second, as part of radical governance reform of the IMF, which is desirable in itself, China should be offered a substantially larger voting share in the IMF commensurate with its economic status.

Discussion Questions:

1. How does China continuing to undervalue its currency threaten the industrial economies of its largest trading partners?
2. What is China’s purpose for maintaining the low value of the RMB relative to the currencies of other nations?
3. What would be a unilateral protectionist measure an Obama administration may advocate if the WTO refuses to take action against China’s currency manipulations? How would you advise president-elect Obama on the issue of whether to take protectionist action against China in the context of the current economic crisis in America?