(What’s Left of) Our Economy: CCP Virus-Era U.S. Trade Figures Continue to Astound

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, exports, GDP, goods trade, Great Recession, gross domestic product, imports, inflation-adjusted growth, real GDP, real trade deficit, services trade, trade deficit, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Meet the new third quarter U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) figures. Practically the same as the old third quarter figures – including on the trade front. The nearly identical 33.1 percent inflation-adjusted annualized growth revealed in today’s second official look at the economy’s performance between July and September remains as meaningless in terms of the fundamentals as it is breathtaking.

After all, it’s completely distorted by the CCP Virus pandemic and resulting shutdown-like decisions and altered consumer behavior that now seem likely to end sooner rather than later due to recently announced vaccine progress. (More industry-specific shifts involving sectors like higher education and business travel and real estate and on-line shopping and the like? They’re of course shaping up as very different stories.)

But it’s worth reviewing the trade highlights of this morning’s figures (and the very similar numbers reported last month) to show just what incredible statistical outliers the pandemic and the government and consumer responses have produced.

The after-inflation quarterly trade deficit came in at $1.0164 trillion at an annual rate – a little worse than the $1.0108 trillion initially estimated. But that’s a staggering 31.13 percent increase from the second quarter total of $775.1 billion – a jump that positively dwarfs the previous record increase of 13.18 percent between the first and second quarters of 2010.

And keep in mind that jump came as the nation was rebounding from the Great Recession – which at that point was its worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Indeed, as reported last month, that quarter’s annualized growth rate was only 3.69 percent – only about a ninth as strong.

Because this year’s third quarter real trade deficit increased slightly while the economy’s growth remained essentially the same (for the record, the new GDP increase number was fractionally smaller than last month’s advance read), the hit to growth from that trade gap rose as well. Its subtraction from growth is now judged to be 3.18 percentage points, not 3.09. Only the 3.22 percentage points cut from growth in the third quarter of 1982 have bit deeper in relative terms.

The bigger trade deficit figure resulted from total imports that rose faster than exports. Last month, the Commerce Department estimated that the former were 12.42 percent greater than the second quarter level. Now the increase is pegged at 12.56 percent. The previous quarterly total import growth figure – which in absolute terms is much bigger – has been increased from 17.58 percent to 17.89 percent.

But where these changes stand in U.S. trade history is nothing less than stunning. The quarterly total import data go back to 1947, and their growth in the third quarter of this year was the strongest since the 21.88 percent recorded in the second quarter of 1969.

The quarterly total import statistics also began in 1947, and on this count, the third quarter’s increase was the worst since the 23.47 percent surge in the third quarter of 1950. These latest trade performances are all the more eye-opening upon realizing that overall U.S. trade flows in 1969 and 1950 were so much smaller than they are today, meaning that big percentage increases were much easier to generate.

The quarterly real trade figures for goods and services individually only go back to 2002, but although the timeframes are much shorter, they’re equally special. During the third quarter of this year, the sequential improvement in goods exports is now reported as 19.60 percent. That’s an all-time high that far surpasses the next best performance – the 6.94 percent advance achieved in the fourth quarter of 2009, during the recovery from that previous Great Recession.

Goods imports in the third quarter soared by 20.08 percent – again dwarfing the previous record of 5.67 percent not-so-coincidentally also recorded in that fourth quarter of 2009.

The story with services trade – which has received an historic blow both nationally and globally from the virus and the shutdowns – interestingly is somewhat less dramatic for the third quarter. Constant dollar services exports only inched up by 0.21 percent in the third quarter, from $582.1 billion annualized to 583.3 billion. These industries clearly are still reeling from the 20.27 percent sequential export collapse they experienced between the first and second quarters, and the 5.67 percent drop between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of this year. As a result, these exports in real terms are sitting at their lowest levels since the second quarter of 2010.

Price-adjusted services imports rose a much faster 5.91 percent after inflation between the second and third quarters. But that increase was only the second biggest on record – after the 7.04 percent jump in the third quarter of 2003. These more modest historical changes reflect the impressive growth in services trade for most of this century – albeit from a base much smaller than that of goods trade.

Please keep in mind that the individual goods and services trade figures still don’t add up to the totals, as I first reported in September. But they’re not that far off, either, which means that the overall third quarter numbers still seem reliable enough, and still confirm how unusual CCP Virus-era trade flows have been – and are likely to be until the nation reaches the Other Side.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Are Businesses Closet Techno-Nationalists?

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, decoupling, General Electric, globalization, innovation, nationalism, tech, technology, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Even if these poll findings are as off as many of the surveys of the 2020 election vote were, they’d still be pretty astounding. After years of multinational companies all over the world (including and perhaps especially in the United States), proclaiming that promoting innovation requires ever greater cooperation with partners across borders, General Electric’s (GE) latest annual survey of business views on the subject turned up strong support for what it calls a protectionist perspective.

It’s definitely something to keep in mind the next time you hear the China-coddling corporate Offshoring Lobby insist that a major U.S. economic decoupling from the People’s Republic would cut America off from an increasingly important source of technological progress, or the Open Borders-friendly Cheap Labor Lobby claim that restricting the inflow of foreign technology workers would deny them and the national economy as a whole access to many of the world’s best talent.

GE has been conducting these studies since 2011, and this year has looked at the subject twice – in January and September. In toto, the views of corporate innovation executives from 22 countries ranging from Kenya to the United States were sampled. (The January poll reported results from 22 countries and the September follow up from ten.)

Among the most startling results:

>This past January, fully 66 percent of the U.S. executives who responded considered that the country is “self-sufficient, and does not need to rely on other countries to innovate.” By September, this figure had climbed to 78 percent.

>In China, the comparable figures were 56 percent and 52 percent, respectively – meaning that, at least according to this GE study, China’s confidence in its technological autonomy has declined.

>Going global, in September, 69 percent of respondents reporting that their national governments had become more techno-protectionist in the last six months said that these policies had “a positive impact on innovation.” Viewed from the opposite end of the policy spectrum, only 41 percent of respondents reporting that their national governments had become less protectionist during this period considered this shift to have benefited innovation.

>In September, nearly all (94 percent) of the respondents from that month’s smaller sample agreed that “a protectionist stance is important to help address the major economic problems in this country created by the pandemic” and an equal percentage believed that such policies are “important to help the domestic economy recover.”

One reason for this support of techno-protectionism might be the widespread belief that it’s increasingly become the way of the world. Fully half of the September respondents told GE that “their government has taken a more protectionist stance during the COVID-19 pandemic” with only 13 percent reporting movement in the opposite direction and 34 percent perceiving no change.

At the same time, the GE poll revealed a deep ambivalence in business ranks about the virtues of tech self-sufficiency. Notably, 86 percent of the September respondents agreed that “More partnerships across countries will help drive progress on innovation.” And half worried that “Restrictions on movement of people/goods/services” were “a major cause for concern regarding innovation progress.”

One possible reason for the continued belief in the value of international collaboration: seemingly strong confidence that techno-nationalism (at least in their home market) will be a flash in the pan. Only 22 percent believed that such protectionism would last more than three years.

These results hardly exhaust the list of unexpected findings from the GE report. In fact, you’ll be seeing some more of them on RealityChek this week. But the discrepancy between them and the almost unamimous endorsement for the free movement of technological knowledge across borders from the corporate community deserves much more attention, and represents evidence that many of the globalist public positions taken by these executives’ companies and businesses stem from concern not for for the national interest, but for their own already healthy bottom lines.

Making News: (Re)Unveiling a Revolutionary U.S. Tax Policy Proposal

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, deficits, fiscal policy, Henry George, Henry George School of Social Science, InsideSources.com, Land-Value Tax, LVT, Making News, municipal finance, recession, taxes, Wuhan virus

And now for something completely different. (Apologies to the Monty Python crew.)

As some of you may know, when I’m not blogging here at RealityChek or Tweeting like a house on fire, I’m serving as a Trustee of the Henry George School of Social Science. This economic education institution seeks to apply some of the truly revolutionary insights reached by George, a Gilded Age/Progressive Era American economist about issues of his day, that strongly resemble some of the biggest challenges of our own times – for example, the rise of economic inequality amid extraordinary wealth creation and technological progress, the replacement of so much productive activity with financial speculation, and the weakening of competition throughout American business as enormous industries grow more monopolistic.

George’s signature proposal was a “land-value tax” (LVT), which he wrote boasted great potential to penalize casino-type finance; reward productive investment and thereby foster production-based, broadly shared prosperity; and break up economically and politically dangerous concentrations of wealth.

Folks associated with the School and with “Georgism” have advocated for this proposal ever since, but we believe that the LVT creates yet another advantage that’s especially important today: Its adoption could place the finances of state and cities devastated by the CCP Virus-induced recession and collapse of tax revenues on a healthy, sustainable footing.

As a result, we’ve launched an effort to show exactly how the LVT could eliminate budget gaps in states and localities across the country, and I’m pleased to announce that the first of these offerings has just been published (as an op-ed I’ve co-authored) by the news syndicate InsideSources.com). Here’s the link.

Moreover, we’ve recently issued a policy brief containing much more data relating to New York City and New York State that you can read here. And in the coming weeks and months, we’ll be sending off locally customized versions of this piece to news organizations in dozens of financially squeezed regions, including detailed projections of exactly how much revenue entirely affordable LVTs could raise.

So keep checking in with RealityChek for info on these articles, and news of other upcoming media appearances and developments.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: U.S. Manufacturing Output Held its Own in October

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automotive, Boeing, CCP Virus, civilian aircraft, coronavirus, COVID 19, durable goods, Federal Reserve, industrial production, manufacturing, masks, medical devices, non-durable goods, pharmaceuticals, PPE, vaccines, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This morning’s monthly Federal Reserve industrial production report is an object lesson in not counting your real manufacturing output chickens too soon – that is, before the revisions hatch.

So keeping in mind that today’s data will be revised further several times as well, it looks like my concerns last month about manufacturing turning from a CCP Virus-era economic leader into a laggard might have been premature.

Not that today’s release, which brings the story through October, showed gangbuster results. Inflation-adjusted manufacturing output increased by 1.04 percent over September’s levels. Much more encouraging, though, were the continually positive overall revisions and especially those for September. Its initially reported 0.29 percent constant dollar monthly output decline is now reported as a fractional (0.01 percent) increase.

As a result, after having sunk by just over twenty percent from February (the last month before the virus began seriously weakening the economy’s performance) through its April bottom, after-inflation manufacturing production is up by 19.35 percent. Alternatively put, it’s 4.56 percent below the February level, and 3,61 percent lower than last October’s.

Today’s October release also provided more evidence that the automotive sector’s dominant role role in determining overall manufacturing growth has just about faded away. Combined vehicles and parts production remained virtually flat in October, after falling an upwardly revised 3.02 percent sequentially in September.

In addition, October’s figures confirmed that, within manufacturing, the non-durable goods supersector has outperformed its durable goods counterpart – mainly because its first-wave pandemic dropoff was so much less dramatic.

Between February and April, price-adjusted durable goods output (including automotive and the troubled aerospace sector – due to Boeing’s woes and the virus-related travel shutdown) plunged by 27.99 percent, versus a 11.53 percent decline in non-durables (which contains industries like food, healthcare goods, and paper products manufacturing).

Since April real durables output has rebounded by 31.22 percent. But it’s still 5.51 percent lower than in February, and 4.19 percent lower than last October.

Since April, non-durables’ real output is up by 9.06 percent. But since its decline was so much less severe than durables’, in after-inflation terms its production is just 3.51 percent off the February level, and 2.97 percent below last October’s figure.

And what of some of the obvious drivers – for good or ill – of manufacturing output during this CCP Virus era?

Between February and April, aircraft and parts production plunged by 32.85 percent. An astonishing 43.31 percent recovery since has left the sector only 3.77 percent production-wise than in February. But because Boeing’s woes predated the pandemic, this output remains down 17.79 percent year-on-year.

Oddly, constant dollar production of medical equipment and supplies (a category including face masks, protective gowns, and ventilators) dropped by 19.75 percent as the CCP Virus was surging between February and April. And since then, it’s risen only 23.20 percent – including an encouraging 3.54 percent monthly improvement in October. Year-on-year, moreover, these sectors have seen 2.73 percent real output growth, but that improvement suggests how modest – and in retrospect, how inadequate – production was before the pandemic.

Finally, pharmaceutical and medicines production has been steady all year long in inflation-adjusted terms, and advanced by a modest 0.12 percent sequentially in October. Year-on-year, moreover, output has grown by just 0.39 percent – which makes these industries of special interest in the months ahead as mass production of recent promising vaccines ramps up.

For now, though, overall, domestic manufacturing production more than held its own in October. But except for that vaccine production, as the virus second wave strengthens, its near-term future could be just as challenging as that of the rest of the economy and nation

Im-Politic: Trump-ism Without Trump for America as a Whole?

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"Defund the Police", allies, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, court packing, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, enforcement, Executive Orders, filibuster, Green New Deal, Huawei, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, judiciary, lockdowns, mask mandate, masks, metals, multilateralism, Muslim ban, Phase One, progressives, Republicans, sanctions, Senate, shutdowns, stimulus, Supreme Court, tariffs, taxes, Trade, trade wars, Trump, unions, Wuhan virus

Since election day, I’ve spent some time and space here and on the air speculating about the future of what I called Trump-ism without Donald Trump in conservative and Republican Party political ranks. Just this weekend, my attention turned to another subject and possibility: Trump-ism without Mr. Trump more broadly speaking, as a shaper – and indeed a decisive shaper – of national public policy during a Joe Biden presidency. Maybe surprisingly, the chances look pretty good.

That is, it’s entirely possible that a Biden administration won’t be able to undo many of President Trump’s signature domestic and foreign policies, at least for years, and it even looks likely if the Senate remains Republican. Think about it issue-by-issue.

With the Senate in Republican hands, there’s simply no prospect at least during the first two Biden years for Democratic progressives’ proposals to pack the Supreme Court, to eliminate the Senate filibuster, or to recast the economy along the lines of the Green New Deal, or grant statehood Democratic strongholds Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A big tax increase on corporations and on the Biden definition of the super-rich looks off the table as well.

If the Senate does flip, the filibuster might be history. But big Democratic losses in the House, and the claims by many veterans of and newcomers to their caucus that those other progressive ambitions, along with Defunding the Police, were to blame, could also gut or greatly water down much of the rest of the far Left’s agenda, too.

CCP Virus policy could be substantially unchanged, too. For all the Biden talk of a national mask mandate, ordering one is almost surely beyond a President’s constitutional powers. Moreover, his pandemic advisors are making clear that, at least for the time being, a sweeping national economic lockdown isn’t what they have in mind. I suspect that some virus economic relief measures willl be signed into law sometime this spring or even earlier, but they won’t carry the total $2 trillion price tag on which Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have insisted for months. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of relief being provided a la carte, as Congressional Republicans have suggested – e.g., including popular provisions like some form of unemployment payment bonus extension and stimulus checks, and excluding less popular measures like stimulus aid for illegal aliens.

My strong sense is that Biden is itching to declare an end to President Trump’s trade wars, and as noted previously, here he could well find common cause with the many Senate Republicans from the party’s establishment wing who have never been comfortable bucking the wishes of an Offshoring Lobby whose campaign contributions it’s long raked in.

Yet the former Vice President has promised his labor union supporters that until the trade problems caused by China’s massive steel overproduction were (somehow) solved, he wouldn’t lift the Trump metals tariffs on allies (which help prevent transshipment and block these third countries from exporting their own China steel trade problems to the United States) – even though they’re the levies that have drawn the most fire from foreign policy globalists and other trade and globalization zealots.

As for the China tariffs themselves, the latest from the Biden team is that they’ll be reviewed. So even though he’s slammed them as wildly counterproductive, they’re obviously not going anywhere soon. (See here for the specifics.) 

Later? Biden’s going to be hard-pressed to lift the levies unless one or both of the following developments take place: first, the allied support he’s touted as the key to combating Beijing’s trade and other economic abuses actually materializes in very convincing ways; second, the Biden administration receives major Chinese concessions in return. Since even if such concessions (e.g., China’s agreement to eliminate or scale back various mercantile practices) were enforceable (they won’t be unless Biden follows the Trump Phase One deal’s approach), they’ll surely require lengthy negotiations. Ditto for Trump administration sanctions on China tech entities like the telecommunications giant Huawei. So expect the Trump-ian China status quo to long outlast Mr. Trump.

Two scenarios that could see at least some of the tariffs or tech sanctions lifted? First, the Chinese make some promises to improve their climate change policies that will be completely phony, but will appeal greatly to the Green New Deal-pushing progressives who will wield much more power if the Senate changes hands, and who have demonstrated virtually no interest in China economic issues. Second, Beijing pledges to ease up on its human rights crackdowns on Hong Kong and the Muslims of Xinjiang province. These promises would be easier to monitor and enforce, but the Chinese regime views such issues as utterly non-negotiable because they’re matters of sovereignty. So China’s repressive practices won’t even be on the official agenda of any talks. Unofficial understandings might be reached under which Beijing would take modest positive steps or suspend further contemplated repression. But I wouldn’t count on such an outcome.

Two areas where Biden supposedly could make big decisions unilaterally whatever happens in the Senate, are immigration and climate change. Executive orders would be the tools, and apparently that’s indeed the game plan. But as Mr. Trump discovered, what Executive Orders and even more routine adminstrative actions can do, a single federal judge responding to a special interest group’s request can delay for months. And these judicial decisions can interfere with presidential authority even on subjects that for decades has been recognized as wide-ranging – notably making immigration enforcement decisions when border crossings impact national security, as with the so-called Trump “Muslim ban.”

I know much less about climate change, but a recently retired attorney friend with long experience litigating on these issues told me that even before Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the Justices collectively looked askance on efforts to create new policy initiatives without legislating. Another “originalist” on the Court should leave even less scope for ignoring Congress.

The bottom line is especially curious given the almost universal expectations that this presidential election would be the most important in recent U.S. history: A deeply divided electorate could well have produced a mandate for more of the same – at least until the 2022 midterms.

Im-Politic: Can Trumpism Without Trump Really Be a Thing?

Tags

CCP Virus, conservatives, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2024, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Mike Pence, Populism, Republicans, Ross Douthat, The New York Times, Tom Cotton, Trump, Wuhan virus

I might have gotten a little ahead of myself when a recent post speculated (optimistically) about the future of Trump-ism without Donald Trump. It’s not that I was wrong that nationalist populism will continue dominating the Republican Party instead of its decades-long belief in globalism, minimal government, and minimal taxes as economic cure-alls in particular. At least not yet.

Instead, reportedly, anyway, there’s a real chance that President Trump won’t pass from the scene if he does lose the White House. There’s even chatter that he might even run again in 2024! Given Mr. Trump’s personality, it’s clear I shouldn’t have overlooked his love of the spotlight. But as a recent column by The New York Times‘ Ross Douthat reminded me, there are solid reasons for viewing the President’s leadership as crucial to the future of the distinctive approach to foreign and domestic policy that he’s spearheaded.

I had written that TrumpWorld shouldn’t find it overly difficult to find a nationally competitive candidate (or candidates) who strongly supports the essentials of Trumpism yet possess the personal discipline to avoid the wild excesses that clearly wounded the President – perhaps mortally – throughout his term in office.

But Douthat noted how central Mr. Trump’s bluster and bombast have been to both creating his base and, just as important in electoral terms, turning them out. And lest we forget amid all the uncertainties about who will take the Oath of Office in January, the Trump vote this month was bigger in absolute terms than in 2016.

It’s still reasonable to argue that, given the advantages of incumbency, Mr. Trump’s style cost him more backing than it maintained or reenforced. But it’s just as reasonable to contend that the President was done in by a literal bolt from the blue — the CCP Virus. Or was a critical mass of voters ultimately convinced that, however much they liked or tolerated Trump-ian excesses during normal times, he was the wrong leader for a pandemic – and for similar future emergencies that couldn’t be ruled out?

If the President stays in the political arena, the big question facing him, supporters and sympathizers, and the nation, will be what, if any, lessons he learns from these last election results. So far, his claims that he actually won reelection indicate that the answer so far is “None.” And in terms of actual results, if he winds up triumphant, or if he loses and his successor’s term isn’t overall a major success, he could be proven right.

But to me, the safest bet for the time being is that the President’s election challenges will fail, that the reasons for his defeat will remain murky, and that the Biden administration’s first term record will fall in the middle ground between unalloyed triumph and unmitigated disaster.

As a result, the best strategy for Trumpers going forward would seem to be to try creating the best of all possible worlds – to find a leader, or leaders, able to thread the needle between Trumpian boisterousness and satisfactory levels of self-control.

The less successful the Biden administration is, the more of the former will be acceptable, and vice versa. But even so, looking at the landscape, it’s tough to identify prominent Republican politicians who can play to in-person and electronic crowds like the President. Conservative populists like Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Marco Rubio seem to check the main issues and the Responsible Adult boxes. So does Vice President Mike Pence. (Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton checks some of these boxes, but his approach to foreign policy has been highly interventionist, and he’s said little of note about using government more to help struggling families or nurture vital but still early-stage industries and technologies.)

But even though Pence was a long-time radio talk show host, I’ve seen no evidence that any of these figures can light up an audience like the President. Optimists can note that Hawley et al aren’t exactly household names, and therefore still have opportunities to create national brands. Pessimists can note that, although they’re all veterans of national politics (except relative newcomer Hawley)…they’re not exactly household names. Maybe that means that they simply lack the “Happy Warrior” gene to begin with?

So leaving aside the Biden factor, the ability of conservative populists to win nationally without Mr. Trump could indeed well hinge in part on whether and to what extent any conservative populists can replicate charisma comparable to the President’s. In particular, can they create or summon up an inner Regular Guy, or project some other persona that’s similarly effective and engaging?

Alternatively, the President could buck the odds and display some kind of a learning curve. The wide gap separating his performances during the first and last presidential debates this fall indicates that’s not out of the question. Much more certain – all parties concerned could benefit from some vigorous competition.

Im-Politic: Is the U.S. Really a CCP Virus Outlier?

Tags

CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, lockdowns, shutdowns, therapeutics, Trump, vaccines, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

It seems pretty clear that President Trump is in serious danger of losing Election 2020 in part because of his handling of the CCP Virus. Much less clear, especially as a second virus wave washes over not only the United States much of the rest of the world, is whether, as frequently charged , Mr. Trump’s record has been such an outlier. And if this allegation is still clear to you, consider the following data showing the rising numbers of infections in the world’s major high-income economies.

The period covered is, with the exception of France, October 2 (around the time when increases began significantly increasing) to yesterday (November 9). The numbers come from the well regarded Worldometers.info website:

United States: 140.20 percent

France: (Oct. 3): 18.75 percent

Spain: 74.62 percent

United Kingdom: 81.64 percent

Italy: 911.33 percent

Germany: 481.19 percent

Netherlands: 22.35 percent

Canada: 117.61 percent

Sweden: 380.20 percent

Japan: 53.07 percent

It’s important to note that these percentages could well change dramatically on very short notice – because some have already changed dramatically in the last few days. For example, through November 7, France’s increase was 411.74 percent. Through October 30, the Netherlands’ was 190.69 percent.

But it’s even more important to note that, especially taking these recent and potential fluctuations into account, America’s results are in the middle of the pack – and even closer to the lower end.

Although any evaluation of these statistics also needs to recognize that major, virus-relevant differences separate these countries (e.g., population density, climate, various demographics), they’re also separated, as widely noted, by substantially different approaches to CCP Virus mitigation. (Regarding population density in particular, that’s why I’m not mentioning very small, crowded European countries like Belgium and Switzerland and Luxembourg. In fact, I almost left out the Netherlands for this very reason.)

And in this vein, it’s more than a little interesting with worst recent records than the United States are Germany and Italy – where lockdowns of their economies and societies have been much more prompt and complete than in the United States.

This leaves the continuing major knock on the Trump record the exceptionally big absolute numbers of virus infections in the United States (including on a per capita basis) compared with those of peer economies and societies. It’s a big knock. But unless you think that large countries can or should be shut down until whatever public health goal their governments happen to set at a given time (bending the curve? slowing the spread? “crushing the virus”?), it shouldn’t be difficult to recognize that the appearance of a second wave immediately following the first reopenings in heavily locked down countries shows that putting the clamps on at best kept the virus temporarily dormant.

One possible conclusion to which these common problems being faced by such a diverse group of countries is one that the American character seems especially resistant to — that not all problems are readily solvable, or solvable at all, or even easily mitigated (at least until science figures out how to produce safe and effective vaccines and cures much faster). And if many of President Trump’s critics can be faulted for such assumption, he’s guilty of similar pollyannism due to his numerous claims that the virus is “under control” – even though nothing about its spread through Europe, in any case, indicated that enduring progress like this was possible at these stages.

That’s not to say that Americans shouldn’t prize their can-do spirit, or that governments are helpless in the face of such disasters – especially since, as far as is known, this disaster wasn’t government- or man-made. And it certainly doesn’t mean that better performance (in addition to better messaging) shouldn’t be expected and demanded. But it does point to the need to scale back expectations and demands, specifically to the realm of the doable, of tradeoffs and genuinely tragic choices, and of the priority-setting that naturally follows.

There’s no guarantee that national leaders will be rewarded for this kind of sober realism. But if this latest U.S. presidential election is any indication, there’s no guarantee that peddling overly rosy scenarios pays off with voters, either.

Making News: Back on National Radio Tonight on the Future of U.S.-China Policy…& More!

Tags

CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Gordon G. Chang, Joe Biden, Making News, tech, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade war, Voice of America, Wuhan virus

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to return tonight to John Batchelor’s nationally syndicated radio show. On the agenda for John, me, and co-host Gordon G. Chang is what happens to the China trade and tech wars if Joe Biden becomes President. Indeed, will they even be waged seriously by Washington?

As has been the case throughout the CCP Virus pandemic, John taped this segment, and it’s not clear when exactly air time will be. But you can listen live on-line to the program at this link starting at 11 PM EST, and I’ll of course post a link to the podcast as soon as one’s available.

In addition, it was great as always to be quoted on the same subject last Thursday on the Voice of America’s Chinese language network. For all you Mandarin speakers, here’s the link. Others (like me) will need to try an on-line translation program.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Biden as National Soul-Saver?

Tags

cancel culture, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, left-wing authoritarianism, Michelle Obama, morality, politics, progressives, stimulus package, Trump, Trump World, wokeness, Wuhan virus

This Joe Biden thing about “a battle for the soul of America” and “restoring the soul of America” — I’ve never liked the self-righteousness of it from the start. And the more I’ve thought about it since Election Day, and especially as the odds of his becoming President seem to grow, the more worried I get, and the more troubled you should be, too. Two reasons stand out.

First, it’s far from clear that the Democratic nominee has thought through the demographics of his ambition. It’s of course clear that what he means by soul-restoring is that Donald Trump’s election as President – or perhaps more specifically his supposed trafficking in racist and other despicable dog whistles – means that something about America morally has gone badly off-track. But what and among whom exactly? Surely he doesn’t believe that his own soul needs to be restored. Ditto for other Trump opponents.

But what about Trump supporters? Let’s assume for a moment that his personal ethical antennae are finely tuned enough to guide the nation’s as a whole. He’s now promising to be a President for all Americans – including the Trumpers. But if their souls are at best badly corrupted (and at worst, no longer exist at all), then why should he take any of their concerns into account, at least until some semblance of what he considers an acceptable moral fabric is somehow regenerated?

As a result, unless he believes that most of Trump World has simply been duped, and that the scales will steadily drop from their eyes after he’s out of the White House, his recent urging that his compatriots recognize that “We are not enemies. We are Americans” is just as incoherent. After all, when one side of a political contest has no collective soul, then clearly their differences with their moral superiors entail more than (presumably acceptable) disagreements over, say, levels of taxing and spending, or the terms of a trade agreement, or defining foreign policy interests. After all, people lacking a soul, or whose soul is badly broken, are far worse, or qualitatively more difficult to contend with. Arguably, they aren’t even human at all, but something genuinely debased. How can reason and persuasion possibly work with the likes of them?

The second reason for concern about Biden’s rhetoric follows logically from the first. Precisely because consigning large numbers of Americans into the soul-less or broken-soul category clearly precludes dealing with them via conventional political means, this belief indicates that the former Vice President doesn’t even believe that he’s operating in the political realm at all – at least when it comes to Trump supporters. Instead, he’s an agent of virtue itself whose objectives are spiritual – and thereby rule out the idea of significant, and perhaps any compromise.

To be sure, there will remain areas of public policy where meaningful compromise is relatively – e.g., taxing and spending and particularly economic stimulus while the CCP Virus is in pandemic mode. But as has been seen in the stimulus debate so far, both parties in Congress have tried to use such legislation to advance goals not so conducive to give-and-take (e.g., the question of whether illegal aliens should receive any relief).

Everything known about Biden’s temperament also indicates that he’s a compromiser, not a crusader, by nature. Indeed, at various times during the campaign, that’s what he’s claimed he would do.

But there also remain areas of public policy that have never been conducive to meaningful compromise – like immigration, and social issues like abortion. In this vein, one of my own principal worries is still that whatever Biden thinks personally, he’ll lack the spine to resist progressive Democrats pushing their increasingly authoritarian impulses and consequent determination to make Cancel Culture The American Way (along with ever more woke Big Business).

He may also lack much interest in pushing back against the kind of anger and sanctimony and intolerance expressed so congently yesterday by, e.g., Michelle Obama – who tweeted, “Let’s remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division.”

Perhaps because the former First Lady is hardly the most extreme member of the Democratic Party, she also added, “We’ve got a lot of work to do to reach out to these folks in the years ahead and connect with them on what unites us.” But she deserves to be asked the same question posed in this post to Biden – from this standpoint, how much important common ground could exist with supporters of “lies, hate, chaos” etc.? Moreover, Biden himself has said that this soul-restoring business was what motivated him to seek the presidency again in the first place. (See the article in The Hill linked above.) So maybe lately there’s a lot more common ground between him and the progressive authoritarians than widely realized.

Here’s one way Biden could begin to ease concerns like this whether he becomes the next President or not. He could spell out in reasonably concrete terms just which of the motivations that have fueled two massive national Trump votes he does view as legitimate – and therefore where he’s ready in principle respond with more than tokenism. Unless and until he does, literally tens of millions of Americans will be perfectly justified in assuming that Biden’s talk of national unification and reconciliation is completely hollow, that they’ll return to Forgotten American status (and maybe worse), and that their own and the nation’s best future hopes rest with making sure he’s a one-term President, too.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: October Costs Manufacturing Some Jobs Momentum

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, automotive, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, Employment, fabricated metal products, food products, Jobs, Joe Biden, machinery, manufacturing, metals, motor vehicle parts, NFP, non-farm jobs, non-farm payrolls, private sector jobs, recession, regulation, tariffs, taxes, Trade, transportation equipment, Trump, Wuhan virus

The manufacturing jobs picture revealed in this morning’s October official U.S. jobs report was a classic glass-half-empty/half-full story. But for the first time since the employment rebound from its CCP Virus-induced lows, the gloomier view seems to have the edge – though a modest one. The main reason: In October, the rate of cumulative manufacturing job creation fell slightly behind that of the U.S. government’s entire employment universe (so-called non-farm payrolls, or NFP), and of the private sector.

Domestic industry increased its employment level on net by 38,000 in October on a sequential basis. That figure represented a decrease from the September total – which has been revised down from 66,000 to 60,000. But it’s an improvement over August’s also downwardly revised 30,000 total.

In addition, as opposed to dominating the manufacturing jobs picture for good and ill, as it has during the pandemic recovery period, automotive jobs, rose by a mere 1,400. The downward revision in combined vehicle and parts payrolls in September, however (from 14,300 to 7,700) did account for more than all of the total downward manufacturing revision for the month.

October’s manufacturing net jobs-creation leaders were fabricated metals products (7,200), food manufacturing (6,200), primary metals (6,000), and machinery (3,900). The first two categories enjoyed their second straight month of relatively strong job improvement, while the primary metals gain amounted to an important turnaround from September’s 3,400 net employment loss.

At the same time the October machinery results – important because that sector influences so much manufacturing activity overall, and because of its close connections to non-manufacturing industries like agriculture and construction) – were much less impressive than the 12,600 employment rise of September. Worse, this figure itself was downgraded from the initially reported 13,800.

The only significant October jobs loser in manufacturing was transportation equipment. This large category – which includes automotive – shed 2,400 jobs on net. The big problem here was motor vehicle parts, where employment fell by 2,800.

October’s employment progress means that manufacturing overall has regained 742,000 (54.44 percent) of the 1.363 million jobs it lost during the worst of the CCP Virus economic slump of March and April. (Those earlier job losses represented 10.61 percent of the last pre-virus – February – manufacturing employment level.)

As of October, non-farm payrolls total had regained 12.070 million (54.47 percent) of the 22.160 million total decrease they suffered in March and April. So although by this definition, overall U.S. employment plunged by 14.53 percent during the virus low point – more proportionately than manufacturing) — the rate of its jobs rebound is now slightly faster.

Faster still has been the bounceback in private sector jobs. Non-government employment (whose status is much more revealing of the economy’s fundamentals than government employment) fell by 21.191 million in March and April combined – greater relative losses (16.34 percent) than experienced either by manufacturing or the non-farm sector. But its strong October performance mean that it’s regained 12.317 million of these position on net – an increase of 58.12 percent.

But as if the CCP Virus and its decimation of the economy haven’t created enough uncertainties for manufacturing employment (and for the economy as a whole), this week’s Election 2020 results could further muddy the waters – especially if the White House changes hands. Despite October’s jobs slowdown, industry’s employment and output have held up well, due no doubt significantly to President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies and domestic overhauls in taxes and regulations. The Trump manufacturing record pre-virus has also been strong. Would a Biden administration reversal of these moves put U.S. manufacturing back behind the eight-ball? Or would it find new alternative growth fuels for industry?