FT.com / Asia-Pacific – Renminbi at heart of trade imbalances.

“The Americans get the toys, the Chinese get the Treasuries and we get screwed.” Thus a European Union official once characterised the pattern of Beijing accumulating US assets by selling renminbis for dollars, while nothing stood in the way of a rapid and destabilising appreciation of the euro.

In a world of freely floating exchange rates trade imbalances between countries would ultimately be reduced and eliminated. At least, that’s the belief of those advocating a floating exchange rate between East Asian currencies and the United States.

Here’s how it is supposed to work:

• Cheap labor and cheap imports from China following China’s joining the world economy 30 years ago led to a rapid increase in demand for Chinese manufactured goods in the US, creating growth, jobs, and rising national income for China.
• A trade imbalance emerges between the US and China as US spending on imports increases more rapidly than America’s  sale of exports. If the Chinese currency were allowed to float freely on foreign exchange markets, however, this imbalance would be temporary, because…
• The US current account deficit means, literally, that Americans are supplying more of their dollars in the foreign exchange market, while demanding more Chinese RMB. The forces of supply and demand would naturally lead to an appreciation of the RMB and a depreciation of the dollar.
• The weaker dollar resulting from the trade deficit with China would eventually make Chinese goods less attractive to Americans. Despite their lower costs of production, the weak dollar makes imported Chinese goods more expensive and less appealing to the American consumer.
• The strong RMB, on the other hand, makes American produced goods and services cheaper to Chinese consumers, who begin to import more from the US at the same time that Americans demand fewer of China’s products.
• Through free-floating exchange rates, a current account imbalance is eventually reduced and eliminated as exchange rates adjust to the flows of goods and services between trading partners.

A graphical version of this story is told here:

This, of course, is precisely what has NOT happened, thanks to China’s strict management of the value of the RMB. In order to keep its currency weak, Beijing directly intervenes in foreign exchange markets, “by selling renmenbi for dollars” to accumulate American assets. As seen in the next graph, such interference has the effect of keeping the dollar strong against the RMB.

As any IB student knows, the Balance  of Payments between two countries includes not only the trade in goods and services, but also the flow of real and financial assets, such as government securities, stocks, real estate, factories, and so on, between the countries. China has actively promoted a policy of acquiring such American assets, which keeps demand for dollars strong in China, and supply of RMB high in America, without creating any jobs in manufacturing or services for Americans. China has financed America’s current account deficit by assuring it maintains a capital account surplus!

Put more simply, China has exported goods and services to America, while America has exported ownership of its real and financial assets to China. This is a major area of concern for US policy makers, who would like to see a more balanced current account between the two countries, since it is the export of goods and services that creates jobs for American workers, not the sale of bonds, stocks and real estate.

Discussion Questions:

1. Why does Europe care about China’s fixed exchange rate with the US dollar?
2. Do you believe that American demand for Chinese goods would actually decline if the RMB were allowed to appreciate against the dollar? Why or why not?
3. Besides American workers and firms, who else suffers from a weak Chinese currency? How could China actually benefit from allowing the RMB to strengthen against the dollar?
4. How does China maintain the RMB’s peg against the dollar without buying large quantities of US exports?

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.

Russell Roberts of George Mason University is a well-known advocate of free trade. This article is one of my favorite and certainly one of the clearest explanations of the mutual benefits resulting from free trade that I have read.

Foreign Policy: Why We Trade – by Russ Roberts

To hear most politicians talk, you’d think that exports are the key to a country’s prosperity and that imports are a threat to its way of life. Trade deficits—importing more than we export—are portrayed as the road to ruin… Politicians are always talking about the necessity of other countries’ opening their markets to American products. They never mention the virtues of opening U.S. markets to foreign products.

This perspective on imports and exports is called mercantilism. It goes back to the 14th century and has about as much intellectual rigor as alchemy, another landmark of the pre-Enlightenment era.

The logic of “exports, good—imports, bad” seems straightforward at first—after all, when a factory closes because of foreign competition, there seem to be fewer jobs than there otherwise would be. Don’t imports cause factories to close? Don’t exports build factories?

But is the logic really so clear? As a thought experiment, take what would seem to be the ideal situation for a mercantilist. Suppose we only export and import nothing. The ultimate trade surplus. So we work and use raw materials and effort and creativity to produce stuff for others without getting anything in return. There’s another name for that. It’s called slavery. How can a country get rich working for others?

Then there’s the mercantilist nightmare: We import from abroad, but foreigners buy nothing from us. What would the world be like if every morning you woke up and found a Japanese car in your driveway, Chinese clothing in your closet, and French wine in your cellar? All at no cost. Does that sound like heaven or hell? The only analogy I can think of is Santa Claus. How can a country get poor from free stuff? Or cheap stuff? How do imports hurt us?

We don’t export to create jobs. We export so we can have money to buy the stuff that’s hard for us to make—or at least hard for us to make as cheaply. We export because that’s the only way to get imports. If people would just give us stuff, then we wouldn’t have to export. But the world doesn’t work that way.

It’s the same in our daily lives. It’s great when people give us presents—a loaf of banana bread or a few tomatoes from the garden. But a new car would be better. Or even just a cheaper car. But the people who bring us cars and clothes and watches and shoes expect something in return. That’s OK. That’s the way the world works. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the goal of life is to turn away bargains from outside our house or outside our country because we’d rather make everything ourselves. Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty.

And imports don’t destroy jobs. They destroy jobs in certain industries. But because trade allows us to buy goods more cheaply than we otherwise could, resources are freed up to expand existing opportunities and to create new ones. That’s why we trade—to leverage the skills of others who can produce things more effectively than we can, freeing us to make things we otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford.

Discussion Questions:

1. “Self-sufficiency is the road to poverty” – Discuss…
2. Explain the logical economic fallacy of the mercantilist philosophy of “exports good, imports bad”
3. “…because trade allows us to buy goods more cheaply than we otherwise could, resources are freed up to expand existing opportunities and to create new ones”. What basic economic principle is Professor Roberts alluding to here?

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?

CBC News – Money – Shipping industry gets tariff break

A tariff is a tax on imported goods or services aimed at raising the price of foreign products to make domestically produced substitutes more attractive to consumers. A tariff is a form of protectionism, which we study in unit 4.1 of the IB Economics course.

Tariffs are appealing to policymakers as a tool for protecting domestic firms from foreign competition. Used wisely, a barrier to trade such as a tariff can promote the development of certain vital industries in the domestic economy that might otherwise not exist due to the existent of more efficient, lower cost foreign competition. Tariffs benefit domestic producers but harm domestic consumers, who must pay a higher price for the imported good than they would have to under purely free trade.

The Canadian government has, until recently, charged a 25% tariff on cargo ships, tankers and large ferries built in foreign countries. As of this month, however, this tariff is being removed.

Imported cargo ships, tankers and large ferries will no longer be subject to a 25 per cent tariff, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty announced Friday.

The measure is aimed at making it cheaper for Canadian shipowners to replace aging fleets with more modern and more efficient vessels.

Waiving the tariff will save the industry $25 million a year for the next 10 years, the government estimates.

“These were tariffs that don’t serve any purpose because … the ships to which they apply are not capable of being made competitively in Canada,” Flaherty told reporters…

The effects of a tariff in the Canadian ship market can be illustrated using a simple supply and demand diagram. The diagram below shows the Canadian ship market before the removal of the 25% tariff and after its removal.

The domestic supply and demand curves for ships in Canada are shown above. Notice that the domestic equilibrium price for ships in Canada without trade is very high. This is because Canadian ship builders have high costs of production and therefore would require a very high price in order to be able to build ships domestically.

So where do Canadian ship buyers get their ships from? The article mentions that one Canadian company bought ships from a Turkish ship builder. Besides Turkey, some of the other countries that specialize in ship production include Denmark, South Korea, China and Japan. The world supply of ships is represented by the blue line. In a purely free trade environment, the price of ships in Canada is determined by the intersection of domestic demand and world supply, at a price of Pw.

The world price of ships is completely unresponsive to changes in demand from Canadian ship buyers. This explains why world supply is horizontal. Since the Canadian market makes up such a small proportion of the total market for ships, an increase in demand in Canada will have no impact on the world price of ships. Therefore, the world supply curve as seen by Canada ship buyers is perfectly elastic. Canadian ship buyers can buy as few ships or as many ships as they like without affecting world price.

A tariff is a tax, and a tax is a determinant of supply. A tariff of 25% increases the costs of imported ships, and shifts the world supply curve upwards. This raises the price of imported ships, and decreases the quantity demanded of ships in Canada from Q3 to Q2 ships. Notice that at the higher world price of Pwt, there are a few domestic ship builders in Canada willing and able to produce and sell ships, so domestic quantity supplied increases from 0 to Q1.

The existence of a tariff reduces the number of imported ships in Canada from 0Q3 to Q1Q2. Domestic producers of ships, who without protection would not be able to compete and therefore produce zero ships, instead produce Q1 and enjoy producer surplus represented by the triangle X. The Canadian government collects taxes on the imported ships represented by the area Z, found by multiplying the number of imported ships (Q1Q2) by the amount of the tariff (Pwt-Pw).

The tariff on imported ships did little good for the Canadian ship market. Canadian ship builders were already uncompetitive and benefited little if at all. While the government did earn revenues from the tax, the net effect on the market was a loss of welfare represented by the triangles labelled Y in the graph above. These gray areas represent the net welfare loss (or dead weight loss) of the ship tariff.

The consumers of ships, which are in fact Canadian companies that produce other goods and services, such as the ferry companies that provide access to Canada’s several remote coastal and island communities, were clearly harmed by the 25% tariff, since the price of ships is a resource cost and the tariff translated into lower supply and higher prices for consumers of ferry services. The tariff’s effect on ship buyers in Canada is visible in the graph above. At a price of Pw, the total consumer surplus in the ship market is the area of VXYZ. With the higher price resulting from the tariff, however, consumer surplus is only the are V, while producer surplus increased only to the area X and government surplus (the tax revenue from the tariff) is area Z. The net effect, however, is a loss of total welfare of the triangles labelled Y.

The tariff’s removal, on the other hand, increases the welfare of ship consumers back to VXYZ, eliminating the dead weight loss and increasing total welfare and efficiency in the ship market. This also benefits the customers of the companies that buy ships, including ferry passengers, as evidenced in the article

“The duty remission to BC Ferries will allow it to implement a two per cent rate reduction for its users later this month, the Finance Department said.”

A tariff on imports is a protectionist measure aimed at increasing domestic producer surplus in a market in which domestic firms face competition from lower cost foreign producers. However, it should be observed that a tariff generally creates a net loss of welfare for society as a whole, as the consumers of the taxed good face a higher price and demand a lower quantity of output. While a tariff reduces imports may increase domestic production, the benefit to producers comes at the cost of lost consumer surplus and a net loss of welfare in the market as a whole. The tariff also leads to allocative inefficiency in a market, as domestic resources are over-allocated towards the production of a good on which imports are subject to tariffs.

Removing tariffs on ships increases the benefit to ship buyers, who in turn pass that benefit on to their own customers, lowering the prices of important services such as shipping and ferry service to Canadian consumers. In addition, foreign producers of ships increase their sales in Canada and experience greater demand, benefiting foreign producers and workers. The increase in foreign income may mean more demand for Canada’s exports in turn, increasing employment in other sectors of the Canadian economy in which they do have a comparative advantage over their trading partners. Overall the elimination of tariffs increases total welfare, eliminates dead weight loss, and leads to a more efficient allocation of a nation’s resources towards the goods it is able to competitively produce in the global economy.

Discussion Questions:

1. What was the intended purpose of the 25% tariff on imported ships? Was this a valid reason to tax foreign built ships?
2. Who are the various “stakeholders” affected by a tariff on imported ships. Try to identify five different stakeholders who are affected by the tariff and its removal.
3. Why does the removal of a tariff improve allocative efficiency in a country? Does it also improve productive efficiency?

Today in class, my IB year 2 students undertook a debate on the extent to which free trade has contributed to or hurt the well-being of the world’s people. In preparation for this debate, students were asked to research and bookmark to our class’s Diigo group one article offering evidence in support of their argument.

The debate was framed around a quote from Paul Krugman from chapter 11 of the excellent book, Naked Economics.

“You could say that globalization, driven not by human goodness but by the profit motive, has done far more good for more people than all the foreign aid and soft loans provided by well-intentioned governments and aid agencies.”

Christopher: Foreign Trade, Not Foreign Aid « John Stossel

The exercise of debating the pros and cons of free trade for rich and poor countries was rewarding and provided an interesting and engaging way to introduce Unit 4 of the IB Economics course. The final two units, on International Trade and Economic Development, are closely tied, as one of the main strategies for achieving improvements in people’s standards of living is to improve the unfettered access to resource, good and service markets across national boundaries. We will be revisiting the debate on the effectiveness of trade versus aid at promoting the objectives of economic development repeatedly throughout the rest of the second year of IB economics.

For now, some questions went unresolved in today’s debate, and I will ask my student and any other interested reader to respond to those questions in the comments below.

Discussion questions:

We are currently studying and analysing some of the trade blocs that exist around the world.  Three East African countries; Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya formed a Customs Union in 1967 with the lofty aims of developing free trade. An article in a past edition of the Economist, explains the evolution of trade in this part of Africa and also explains how the group of nations is attempting to revitalise and strengthen the agreement.

An East African Federation – PDF download

Each of the nations who are members of this trade bloc are at different stages of development, thus have different things to gain or lose through the expansion of the trade bloc. Uganda is rich with natural resources such as oil, Tanzania lacks the same educated workforce of Kenya, which inturn has high levels of endemic corruption. The risk for all three nations in a free trade agreement is the exploitation of resources across national borders.

This is a good video which introduces the new Common Market.

Have a read of the article at the link above and complete the following discussion questions.

Discussion Questions:

1. What kind of trade bloc exists between the existing members of the East African Community?
2. Who are the original members of the EAC?
3. Describe how the East African Communtiy (EAC) has changed overtime?
4. What are the advantages of altering the EAC to become a customs union and common currency union, with a bigger population base, and to include nations such as Somalia, South Sudan and Congo
5. What are the disadvantages of such a policy?

Louris Yamaguchi – CC Commons – Flikr

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?

One feature of Economics in Plain English several students and teachers have found helpful over the years is the Econ Help Desk, where readers can get questions about basic economic concepts answered personally by me.

Recently I received the following email from an AP Macroeconomics teacher in the United States:

I have a question about graphs that illustrate how trade preferences (specifically Supply and Demand shifts), affect P, Q and Pe on Supply-Demand GRAPHS of Currency Exchange.

In teaching my AP Macro students about this concept, I have reached a gap in our full understanding how to graph the Supply and Demand of Yen, or Euro (Price in USD).

For example, if the Price levels rise in the U.S., relative to Japan’s, and consequently, the U.S. demands more Japanese cars and stereos, the only label that we ever see for the x-axis is “Q” or Quantity, or Qe, a vertical line that represents the starting “market clearing price”, of .01USD=1Y. When DEMAND or SUPPLY shifts, the only change that I ever see labeled on the graphs is the Y-Price in USD of Yen, but descriptions simply talk about the Y=1.

When Demand or Supply shifts (in response to increased demand for Yen), and there is a new higher or lower USD Price for Yen, respectively, does the vertical line for Q simply shift outward (continuing to represent Y=1) at whatever the new Price Equilibrium becomes (simply meaning just more “1s” of them in circulation (at each new Pe market-clearing point)?

Thanks

Here is my response:

Hello, I will try to address your questions below.

Exchange rates can be determined by several factors, including relative price levels, relative interest rates, tastes and preferences of domestic and international consumers, relative income levels at home and abroad and speculation by currency traders. As you say, an increase in the price level of goods produced in United States (say, Fords), ceteris paribus, should lead to an increase in demand among American consumers for goods produced in Japan (say, Hondas), which now appear relatively cheaper. Demand for Yen increases among American households who wish to buy Japanese goods. The USD price of Yen then rises in the Yen market. Since Japanese holders of Yen now receive more USD for each Yen, they will provide more Yen (this is another way of saying with an increase in demand for Yen, the quantity supplied of Yen increases).

Theory would say that there is no increase in the supply of Yen following an increase in Demand by American consumers, only an increase in quantity supplied. The Yen clearly appreciates, as the USD/Yen exchange rate rises. Now, there is another side to this story. The Yen market refers to the market for Yen in the United States. Yen will appreciate in the United States. Simultaneously, USD will depreciate in Japan, as Americans buy more Japanese goods, they are supplying more USD in the USD market in Japan. Here the “price” or the exchange rate is Yen/USD. The Yen price of a USD will fall as the supply of USD increase as Americans exchange their dollars for Yen to buy the relatively cheap Japanese goods.

The “market-clearing price” in forex markets is the exchange rate that prevails in a floating exchanged rate system where exchange rates are determined solely by supply and demand by international consumers, investors, government, banks, and firms. Assume the Yen is trading for $0.01. If , following inflation in the United States and the corresponding increase in demand for Yen, the value of the Yen remained at $0.01, then the quantity demanded for Yen would exceed the quantity supplied. There would be shortages of Japanese goods in the United States, as Japanese goods are in greater demand yet their prices have not risen. In order to “clear the market” so to speak, the exchange rate must rise, to say $0.012. Now, a Yen’s worth of goods “costs” Americans 20% more than previous, making them less attractive over time. Likewise, a dollar’s worth of goods “costs” Japanese consumers 20% less, since the dollar is weaker in Japan.

As you can foresee, the floating value of the Yen should lead to relatively balanced trade between Japan and the US. The US current account will initially move towards deficit as inflation makes American goods more expensive, however, as demand for Japanese goods increases, the value of the Yen rises making Japanese goods more expensive, which will eventually reduce their appeal to American consumers who will once again begin consuming more American goods and importing less. Japanese will notice the weaker dollar makes US imports cheaper and begin importing more American products. The US current account should remain  balanced in the long-run in a floating exchange rate system.

I don’t know if you’ve had a look at my study guides on exchange rates and balance of payments, but those may help clarify graphically what I describe above:

• Unit 4: Exchange Rates
• Unit 4: Balance of Payments

I hope this clarifies your understanding of how relative price levels help determine exchange rates!

Best,
Jason

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