MESSAGE
DATE | 2021-01-02 |
FROM | Ruben Safir
|
SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] What COVID-19 has meant to Western Economies and
|
From hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Sat Jan 2 20:55:58 2021 Return-Path: X-Original-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Delivered-To: archive-at-mrbrklyn.com Received: from www2.mrbrklyn.com (www2.mrbrklyn.com [96.57.23.82]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5354716405A; Sat, 2 Jan 2021 20:55:58 -0500 (EST) X-Original-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Delivered-To: hangout-at-nylxs.com Received: from [10.0.0.62] (www.mrbrklyn.com [96.57.23.83]) by mrbrklyn.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6E22C164046; Sat, 2 Jan 2021 20:55:34 -0500 (EST) To: Hangout , "Wuhan(COVID)-19 Discussion and Medical Professionals" From: Ruben Safir Message-ID: Date: Sat, 2 Jan 2021 03:09:52 -0500 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.6.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Language: en-US Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] What COVID-19 has meant to Western Economies and Internation relations X-BeenThere: hangout-at-nylxs.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.30rc1 Precedence: list List-Id: NYLXS Tech Talk and Politics List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Errors-To: hangout-bounces-at-nylxs.com Sender: "Hangout"
wsj.com Biden=92s Get-Tough Plans Face Sobering China Reality Gerald F. Seib 6-8 minutes
As President-elect Joe Biden=92s team prepares to move in, there=92s a lot of loose talk in Washington about getting tougher with China, and beginning the process of decoupling the two nations=92 economies.
As is often the case with loose talk, though, reality is a lot more complicated. Getting tougher economically will be, well, tough.
Despite four years of pressure from the Trump administration, China=92s economy actually is stronger in some ways at the moment than is the economy of the West. Though China has plenty of its own problems, international capital is flowing in, not out. Within Asia, China actually has improved its trade position.
=93China is in a strong negotiating situation,=94 says Josh Lipsky, director of programs and policy at the Atlantic Council=92s GeoEconomics Center. He adds: =93The centrifugal forces coming out of China are stronger than they were in 2017.=94
Indeed, the International Monetary Fund projects that China=92s economy will expand by 1.9% in 2020, which means it is likely to be the only major world economy to grow in this year of the coronavirus pandemic. By contrast, the American economy is expected to shrink by 4.3%, and the eurozone is forecast to contract by 8.3%.
Mr. Biden has talked about forging a stronger front with allied nations to reduce China=92s economic leverage, and creating incentives for American companies to move critical supply chains home from China. He hasn=92t declared yet what he will do with the tariffs President Trump has imposed on a range of imports from China, or the future of a partial trade deal the Trump administration negotiated with Beijing.
The IMF projects that China=92s economy will expand by 1.9% in 2020, despite the coronavirus pandemic. Photo: alex plavevski/EPA/Shutterstock
As he faces those decisions, Mr. Biden is looking at a China that, in many respects, has weathered its trade fight with the Trump administration surprisingly well. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that the U.S. trade deficit with China in October, the latest month for which figures are available, was just 5% smaller than it was a year earlier. American exports to China were higher, largely because of more purchases of agricultural products, but so were imports from China.
On other fronts, China=92s economic leverage actually has grown. It has joined 14 other countries in a new regional trade bloc that excludes the U.S.
Meantime, European nations are trying to complete a bilateral investment agreement with China. Overall, despite rising political tensions between China and the West, Western financial capital is flowing into China.
A recent Atlantic Council report shows that foreign purchases of Chinese debt have risen markedly over the last four years, and concludes: =93Generally speaking, China=92s opening measures promoting further integration of its financial markets with global markets stand in sharp contrast with the decoupling rhetoric coming out of Washington.=94
David Dollar, a former U.S. Treasury attach=E9 in Beijing, notes that America=92s allies generally are less interested in detaching their economies from China=92s than is the U.S. =93If our allies remain engaged with China, then our decoupling would isolate us and strengthen China=92s relative position,=94 he says.
Moreover, he argues, even if the U.S. succeeded at pushing China out of the global economy and its institutions, =93China likely would create alternative institutions, and many developing countries will find it in their interest to go with China. So, we would re-create the kind of blocs that we had during the Cold War.=94
More broadly, there is a danger that economic decoupling actually would exacerbate the geopolitical and military tensions that already hang over the U.S.-China relationship. One of the forces that can keep the rivalry from getting out of control is mutual economic dependence. Unlike in the Cold War, when the U.S. had little financial entanglement with the Soviet Union and virtually no economic dependence on it, Washington and Beijing have a deeply layered economic relationship that, so far at least, has almost forced them to find a way to coexist.
That mutual dependence now is at least being called into question, with potentially far-reaching ramifications. =93The U.S. and China are locked in an explicit and escalating power struggle that could tear apart the rules and institutions underpinning the global trade and governance systems,=94 says Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. =93This will have deleterious effects on multilateralism, giving way instead to warring coalitions on a range of key issues relevant to businesses, consumers and investors around the world.=94
The bottom line is that the U.S. and China inevitably are heading into a more tense relationship during the Biden years, on security, trade and economic fronts. There is broad, bipartisan sentiment for a tougher approach to Beijing. But exactly what shape this changing relationship takes is very much up in the air. Meantime, the uncomfortable reality is that China enters this period of reassessment with some strong economic cards in its hand.
Biden=92s China Policy: New President-Elect, Same Tensions
Biden=92s China Policy: New President-Elect, Same Tensions President-elect Joe Biden has sent signals that the U.S. will remain tough on China, from trade to technology. WSJ=92s Jonathan Cheng explains the new administration=92s policy approach and how China might respond. Photo: Lintao Zhang/Press Pool (Originally published Nov. 11, 2020)
Write to Gerald F. Seib at jerry.seib-at-wsj.com
-- =
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998 http://www.mrbrklyn.com DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps, but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013 _______________________________________________ Hangout mailing list Hangout-at-nylxs.com http://lists.mrbrklyn.com/mailman/listinfo/hangout
|
|