Tag: Finance and economics

WHEN President Donald Trump tweeted “We want free, fair and SMART TRADE,” on March 1st, trade-watchers groaned. Later that day, after months of back-and-forth between the protectionists and the globalists in the White House, he appeared to deliver the tariffs he has long been promising. He announced tariffs of 25% on imports of steel and 10% on those of aluminium. He promised protection “for a long time”, adding “you’ll have to grow your industries, that’s all I’m asking.” According to the New York Times, he told the assembled executives from steel and aluminium firms whom he met before the announcement that he did not intend to exclude any country from the tariffs.

Mr Trump’s bid to nurse America’s steel and aluminium industries to health could benefit some workers. There is a global glut of both metals, largely driven by an enormous expansion of China’s production capacity since the early 2000s. That created trade flows to America that over 420 separate anti-dumping and countervailing duties could not fully stem.

The avowed aim of the tariffs, though, is national security. Dennis Harbath, who manages the only smelter in America that produces the high-purity aluminium used in some fighter jets, is gratefully preparing to restart some idled production lines as soon as the tariffs are brought in.

Seen more broadly, the proposals…Continue reading

ACCORDING to President Donald Trump, money is pouring into America from abroad. The tax reform he signed into law in December means American firms can no longer defer paying taxes on profits left sitting in foreign subsidiaries. The change has led to some uplifting headlines. Apple said that it would make a one-off tax payment of $38bn relating to its past accumulation of $252bn in foreign earnings. Presumably, it will now start to bring this cash home. “Huge win for American workers and the USA!” tweeted Mr Trump. Yet despite the prospect of large-scale profit repatriations, the dollar has been strangely weak of late. Since the start of November, when tax reform began looking likely to pass, the greenback has fallen by about 3%. What is going on?

Start with the fact that repatriations are mostly not true capital inflows. An analysis by Zoltan Pozsar of Credit Suisse finds that, as of March 2017, American corporations had amassed around $2.2trn of earnings in overseas subsidiaries. About half was…Continue reading

AGUS SACCHAL sells sheets and blankets from a warehouse in Buenos Aires, for which he is paid in Argentine pesos. While the pesos go into his wallet, two other banknotes are stuck to his office window. One is a ten-yuan note from a visit to China, where he went in search of cheap textiles. The other is a $5 bill, pinned next to an invoice, also in dollars. Though he does not trade with America directly, when importing he uses the greenback.

Argentina’s rocky financial history makes the dollar’s dominance there unsurprising. Still, it is an extreme case of a wider phenomenon. After gathering data on 91% of the world’s imports, by value, Gita Gopinath of Harvard University found that America accounts for nearly 10%. But its currency is used in over 40% of invoicing.

Recent research suggests that this creates a link between a weak dollar and buoyant trade flows—and vice versa. Trends since 1999 are suggestive (see chart). During 2017 the dollar depreciated by 7% against a basket of other currencies, as global trade flows surged…Continue reading

REAL interest rates in the developed world have been low ever since the financial crisis of 2008-09 (see chart). The global economy might have struggled to recover had that not been the case; higher rates would have caused many more companies and homeowners to default.

Central banks are now starting to push rates slightly higher. And according to a new paper* from Bain, a management consultancy, the trend towards robotics will push them higher still—at least for a decade. That could be a shock for the financial markets.

Bain estimates that by 2030 American companies will have invested as much as $8trn in automation. As companies scramble to borrow money in order to buy machinery and robots, the resulting investment boom will drive up rates.

Automation will boost productivity, which has grown sluggishly in recent years. This slowdown may have been caused by the shift from manufacturing to services, where productivity gains are harder to achieve. Between 1993 and 2014, the American…Continue reading

BRAZIL and Russia, the third- and fourth-biggest emerging economies, have much in common beyond their size. Each boasts annual GDP per person of around $10,000, which depends more than either would like on natural riches. After commodity prices tumbled in 2014, their economies shrank and their currencies sank. Their central banks have fought hard against the ensuing inflation, driving it below 3%. That has allowed both to cut interest rates, contributing to modest economic recoveries.

But their fiscal fortunes have diverged. Brazil’s credit rating was cut by Fitch on February 18th, making its sovereign bonds even “junkier” (ie, more speculative). Russia’s rating, by contrast, was raised a few days later by S&P Global, which became the second agency to rate Russian sovereign debt as “investment grade”.

That might seem an odd description for a country embroiled in two wars and encumbered by sanctions. But Russia’s upgrade is not hard to justify. Though its approach to geopolitics is adventurous, its approach to…Continue reading

FOR Charles Li, Alibaba was the one that got away. The head of the Hong Kong stock exchange (HKEX) courted the Chinese e-commerce giant when it sought a venue for its listing five years ago, but he could not push through rule changes wanted by Alibaba to keep control of the company in its leaders’ hands. It opted instead for an initial public offering (IPO) in New York. “Losing one or two listing candidates is not a big deal for Hong Kong,” he wrote at the time. “But losing a generation of companies from China’s new economy is.” Since then he has been determined to make the next big catch.

It is finally within his grasp. After a debate that has trundled on for several years HKEX is, in the coming weeks, poised to allow companies to issue shares with different voting rights. Known as dual-class shares, these give founders the ability to control their firms, even as minority owners. This should make Hong Kong the favoured destination for the next wave of Chinese tech firms to go public, from Xiaomi, a smartphone maker, to Ant Financial,…Continue reading

WATCHING money drain from your bank account has never been so much fun. On WhatsApp, a messaging service ubiquitous in India, sending rupees is now as easy as posting a selfie. Set-up is a breeze, because all Indian banks have been corralled onto a common payment platform on which anyone, from Google and Samsung to local payment firms and banks themselves, can build their own user interface. Money zips instantly from one bank account to the other, without any need to set up a pesky digital wallet or download some new app. At least outside China, there is no simpler way to shift money today.

WhatsApp’s offering is being rolled out gradually. The number of transactions routed through the United Payments Interface (UPI), the system on which WhatsApp and the rest are riding, has soared from almost nothing in early 2017 to over 150m a month in January. On current trends, UPI transfers will overtake cash withdrawals from banks within weeks. Some 665bn rupees ($10.2bn) will have shifted hands—or…Continue reading

BOSSES have always sought control over how workers do their jobs. Whatever subtlety there once was to this art, technology is now obliterating. In February Amazon received patents for a wristband apparently intended to shepherd labourers in its warehouses through their jobs with maximum efficiency. The device, were Amazon to produce and use it, could collect detailed information about each worker’s whereabouts and movements, and strategically vibrate in order to guide their actions. Using such technology seems an obvious step for firms seeking to maximise productivity. Whether workers should welcome the trend, or fear it, is harder to say.

Workplace discipline came into its own during the Industrial Revolution. As production came to depend ever more on expensive capital equipment, bosses, not keen to see that equipment sitting idle, curtailed their workers’ freedom, demanding they work during set hours, in co-ordination with other employees, at a pace dictated by the firm. Technology creates new…Continue reading

Terminal velocity

“WHEN it comes to the meaning of life, we will all return to zero one day.” So philosophised Wu Xiaohui, a Chinese tycoon, as he reflected on his success in 2015. Little did he realise how soon his words would be proved true. He founded his firm, Anbang, as a small car-insurance company just over a decade ago. By 2017 it ranked among the world’s biggest insurers, with some $300bn of assets, including stakes in hotels and financial firms in America, Europe and Asia. But then, even more vertiginous than its ascent, came its fall. On February 23rd China’s government said it had taken over Anbang and would prosecute Mr Wu for economic crimes.

Rarely in corporate history has a giant grown and collapsed so quickly. But Anbang’s tale is also interesting for what it reveals about China’s economic landscape. It is the clearest demonstration that regulators are serious about defusing debt risks that have built up in recent years. And it reveals the murky…Continue reading

STOCK traders hang on central bankers’ every utterance. They scan news sites for market-moving events, such as terrorist attacks, and monitor President Donald Trump’s tweets for hostility towards publicly traded firms. Curiously, though, few analyse goings-on in Congress, which can shift the course of the world’s largest economy. Jonathan Strong, a former reporter (including at Roll Call, a sister publication of The Economist), hopes to change that.

With the help of 0ptimus, a firm of Republican data wonks, he has spent three years building Legis, an algorithm powered by vast quantities of data and a neural network (a computer system modelled on the human brain), which predicts the outcome of congressional votes. Each of the 44 votes it has forecast so far has been correct. Last year a hedge fund (which does not want to be named) began trading derivatives using its predictions.

According to legend, carrier pigeons brought news of the Duke of Wellington’s…Continue reading