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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Virus Leaves U.S. Growth and Trade Figures Still Distorted After All These Months

22 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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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 growth, real trade deficit, recession, recovery, services trade, trade deficit, U.S. Commerce Department, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The final (for now) official read for America’s economic growth in the third quarter came out this morning, and it confirmed again that both the gross domestic product (GDP) and the country’s major trade flows changed (and were distorted by) historic rates during that phase of the CCP Virus pandemic.

At the same time, the new inflation-adjusted GDP data (the measure most closely followed by serious students of the economy) and the related trade figures make clear that in these 30,000-foot macroeconomic terms, trade has been a minor part of the post-virus growth picture. (In terms of specific products, like healthcare-related goods, the story is of course different, because their availability has affected the severity of the pandemic and resulting deep economic slump, and the expected schedule for recovery.)

Not surprisingly, given the slightly faster real expansion reported by the Commerce Department this morning (33.4 percent at an annual rate, versus the previously judged 33.1 percent), and continued economic sluggishness overseas, the quarter’s after-inflation overall trade deficit came in slightly higher, too – $1.0190 trillion annualized as opposed to $1.0164 trillion.

That’s a new quarterly record by an even wider margin than reported in the previous GDP report. So is the sequential increase – 31.47 percent as opposed to 31.13 percent. Just for some perspective, the next biggest quarterly jump in the constant dollar trade gap was just 13.18 percent (between the first and second quarters of 2010).

But as noted in last month’s RealityChek GDP post, 2010 was when the U.S. economy was recovering from the Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis, and annualized growth during that second quarter was just a ninth as fast (3.69 percent) as this year’s third quarter.

The subtraction from real economic growth generated by the latest surge in the trade deficit was big in absolute terms (3.21 percentage points), increased slightly over the previously reported 3.18 percentage points), and still stands just shy of the all-time biggest trade bite (3.22 percentage points, in the third quarter of 1982). But set against 33.4 percent annualized growth, it’s clearly not very big at all.

Combined goods and services exports and imports changed to roughly the same modest degree as the overall trade deficit. The quarter-to-quarter price-adjusted export increase was revised down from 12.56 percent to 12.41 percent, and the total real import increase is now judged to be 17.87 percent, not 17.89 percent. As a result, both figures remained multi-decade worsts and bests.

Somewhat greater relative changes took place in the service trade data – which isn’t surprising, with the service sector having been hit much harder by the pandemic than goods sectors.

All the same, whereas the previous GDP report showed that after-inflation services exports edged up on quarter by 0.21 percent (from $582.1 billion annualized to $583.3 billion), this morning’s release recorded slippage – by 0.14 percent, to $581.3 billion. Consequently, they now stand at their lowest quarterly level since the third quarter of 2009 – just as that Great Recession recovery was beginning.

As for real services imports, their quarterly price-adjusted increase was revised down from 5.91 percent to 5.70 percent, and their $393.3 billion level was the lowest since the third quarter of 2006.

Unfortunately, the prospect that these CCP Virus-related distortions in economic growth and trade figures will soon come to an end still seems as remote as the prospect that the virus itself will soon be tamed – even with the beginning of mass vaccination. As a result, for the time being, tracking these numbers will be useful for getting a sense of those distortions’ scale, but the underlying health of the economy, and of its trade flows, will remain elusive.

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

25 Wednesday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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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: Through the Pandemic Fog, Signs of Trump Trade Progress Keep Coming

05 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, aircraft, Boeing, CCP Virus, Census Bureau, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, exports, goods trade, healthcare goods, imports, Made in Washington trade deficit, manufacturing, manufacturing trade deficit, medical devices, non-oil goods trade deficit, pharmaceuticals, services trade, tariffs, Trade, trade deficit, trade war, Trump, Wuhan virus

Proof positive that much of the U.S. government grinds on whatever the political tumult surrounding it: Despite the controversies that erupted due to the largely unexpected, still-incomplete, and increasingly contested Presidential election results, the Census Bureau nonetheless still put out the new monthly U.S. trade report yesterday – this one taking the story through September.

And by the bizarro economic standards of the bizarro CCP Virus era, the figures were strangely normal: The various September deficits remained awfully high given an economy whose levels are still markedly subdued despite a powerful growth rebound in the third quarter (which ended in September). Yet although these results have been widely interpreted as a stinging rebuke to effectiveness of President Trump’s tariff-centric trade policies (see, e.g., here and here), widely overlooked details reveal major mitigating developments – and resulting reasons for continued encouragement.

As for the awfully high deficits: The combined goods and services trade gap actually decreased on month by 4.73 percent, from a downwardly adjusted $67.04 billion to $63.86 billion. Yet this monthly total (during a troubled economic time) was still firmly in the neighborhood of trade shortfalls during the bubbly mid-2000s, when Washington’s trade policy was about as cluelessly import- and especially China-friendly as possible.

Moreover, back in those days, oil made up a much bigger share of the total goods deficit than today. So obviously, most of the remaining gap owes a good deal to U.S. trade policy decisions – as will be seen below.

Encouragingly, total U.S. exports to a world still largely struggling with virus-related downturns of its own were up 2.55 percent sequentially in September, and registered their best performance ($176.35 billion) since March – just as major pandemic effects were taking hold. Total September imports of $240.22 billion also represented the highest amount ($240.22 billion) since March, but the monthly increase was only 0.51 percent. And where export growth has consistently been strong since May, import growth has begun slowing markedly.

Yet the persistence of high combined goods and services U.S. trade shortfalls stems mainly from problems with services trade that are clearly CCP Virus-related. For example, the longstanding services surplus (which of course includes travel services) is on track for its biggest drop since recessionary 2001. So far, through the first three quarters of 2020, it’s sunk by 20.47 percent on a year-to-date basis.

Indeed, the $43.96 billion reduction in the services surplus has been greater than the $38.54 billion increase in the overall deficit – meaning that if the service surplus had simply remained the same, the total deficit would have declined year-to-date (although still less than expected at least during a normal deep recession).

As indicated above, however, the total trade numbers don’t tell the whole story about the successes or failures of trade policy. That’s because, as known by RealityChek regulars, services are one huge sector where trade agreements and similar decisions have had relatively little impact so far. Ditto for oil

At first glance, examing trade flows that are substantially “Made in Washington” also reveals a nice-sized monthly September reduction in that deficit (4.62 percent), but to a level that’s the third worst on record ($80.74 billion) – just behind the August and July totals, respectively. And on a year-to-date basis, the Made in Washington deficit is up 3.80 percent from last year,to $663.55 billion.

Yet here’s where another detail comes in. This entails the woes of Boeing, which have spread beyond the safety debacle stemming from crashes of its popular 737 Max model to the global virus-induced collapse in air travel.

The safety problems of 2019 cut the longstanding U.S. civilian aircraft trade surplus by nearly 28 percent, or $8.86 billion on a January-September basis. Had the surplus stayed stable, it would have risen only from $600.08 billion during the first three quarters of 2018 to $630.39 billion, rather than $639.25 billion. Given all the import front-running seen throughout 2019 to try to avoid the Trump China tariffs (which artificially inflated the entire non-oil import total), that’s not a bad performance at all.

The aircraft effect has been much more dramatic this year. Year-to-date through September, the Made in Washington deficit is up from that $630.29 billion to $663.55 billion. Yet the nosedive in the aircraft surplus (all the way from $23.16 billion to just under $3 billion) accounts for nearly 83 percent of that increase.

Want another aircraft effect? Check out the manufacturing trade deficit – so rightly the focus of the President’s attention. Month-to-month, it rose by only 1.46 percent. But the new September level of $103.87 billion is the second-worst monthly total of all time – just behind July’s $104.63 billion. Even worse: The aircraft industry’s problems didn’t add to this number, since its trade deficit actually shrunk slightly on month.

But for the entire year so far, the plunge in the aircraft surplus (which, not so coincidentally, has been mirrored by smaller but not trivial reductions in the surpluses of all sorts of aircraft parts, including engines) has made a sizable difference. From January-September, 2019 to this year’s comparable period, the manufacturing trade shortfall has grown by $10.18 billion, from $777.60 billion to $787.78 billion. Take out the $20.16 billion worsening of the aircraft trade surplus, and the $10.18 billion higher year-to-date manufacturing trade deficit becomes a nearly $10 billion lower year-to-date manufacturing trade deficit.

And when it comes to both the manufacturing and overall Made in Washington trade deficits and a virus effect, don’t forget its healthcare goods component. Specifically, the U.S. trade deficit in pharmaceutical preparations jumped by $12.58 billion year-to-date between last year and this year, and in the categories containing (but not restricted to) protective gear like masks and gowns, testing swabs, ventilators, and oxygen tents by another $2.33 billion.

Since China remains so important for Made in Washington and manufacturing trade flows, bilateral exports, imports, and deficits not surprisingly reveal a major pandemic effect, too. The big China difference is how strongly the September data confirm that President Trump’s goals of reducing the bilateral trade gap and decoupling economically from the People’s Republic are being achieved even without taking the CCP Virus into account.

On a monthly basis, the goods trade gap with China dipped fractionally in September, to $29.67 billion. This total represented the second straight such drop and the lowest level since Aprils $28.40 billion. These merchandise imports inched up sequentially in September by just under one percent and have been virtually flat since July, but goods exports improved by 4.53 percent.

On a year-to-date basis, America’s China trade looks like it’s in even better shape. U.S. goods imports from China are off by nearly 11 percent ($37.54 billion) over this stretch, and the trade gap has become 15.24 percent ($40.06 billion) smaller.

This progress, moreover, has been achieved even though total U.S. exports of civilian aircraft and parts (including engines) to China have shrunk by $4.09 billion and the trade deficit in the virus-related medical equipment categories has risen by $1.25 billion. (Oddly, the bilateral pharmaceutical preparations trade balance has improved with the surplus improving from $449 million to $836 million.)

When all of these virus-related complications and the inevitably disruptive and therefore initial efficiency-reducing impact of the Trump trade policies are considered, two questions arise that are equally fascinating and important. First, once these temporary shocks pass, will this approach to globalization look more like a win or a loss for the U.S. economy? Second, will American election politics give the nation a chance to find out?

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Records and More Puzzles in the GDP Report’s Trade Numbers

29 Thursday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, CCP Virus, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, exports, GDP, global financial crisis, goods, Great Recession, imports, inflation-adjusted growth, real GDP, real trade deficit, recession, services, Trade, trade deficit, Wuhan virus

So many all-time and multi-year and even decade worsts revealed by the trade data revealed in the official U.S. economic growth figures released this morning! And even though these data on changes in the gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter of this year are pretty meaningless from an economic standpoint – because they’re so thoroughly distorted by the government-ordered shutdowns and reopenings due to the CCP Virus – they’re worth noting for the record, anyway.

But here’s something else worth noting – as with the last batch of GDP figures (the final-for-now results for the second quarter), the trade figures don’t seem to add up.

Let’s start with the records. Largely due to the strongest sequential U.S. growth on record (33.1 percent after inflation on an annualized basis), fueled by significant reopening plus massive government stimulus or relief funds (choose your own label), the quarterly inflation adjusted trade deficit hit an astounding $1.0108 trillion annualized. (The inflation-adjusted, or “real,” statistics are the ones most closely followed; therefore, unless otherwise specified, they’ll be the ones used from hereon in.)

Not only was that total a record in absolute terms. The 30.41 percent increase from the final second quarter level of $775.1 billion was the biggest since the Commerce Department began presenting trade deficit figures (as opposed to the simple export and import findings) in 2002. For context, the next greatest such jump was only 13.18 percent, between the first and second quarters of 2010.

The economy was recovering then, too – from the Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis – but that quarter’s annualized growth rate was only 3.69 percent.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the GDP reports treat increases in the trade deficit as subtractions from growth, and the third quarter’s was the worst in absolute terms (3.09 percentage points from that 33.1 percent annualized growth total) since the 3.22 percentage points sliced from growth in the third quarter of 1982. (For some reason, these data go back even further than that.)

In relative terms, though, the trade effect in 1982 couldn’t have differed more from the situation this year, as during that third quarter, the economy shrank in price-adjusted terms by 1.5 percent on an annual basis.

But those internal numbers!

According to the Commerce Department, exports in the third quarter added up to $2.1667 trillion annualized. But if you actually add the separate goods and services numbers provided, you get a sum of $2.1921 trillion. On the import side, the separate figures add up to a total of $3.2123 trillion, not the reported $3.1775 trillion. Therefore, the quarterly deficit would seem to be $1.0202 trillion, not the $1.0108 trillion presented.

As with the previous discrepancies, although this batch’s aren’t big enough to change the overall picture, they do raise some questions about the reliability of the rest of the data. So I’ll be hoping that the apparent confusion will be cleared up a month from now, when Commerce releases its second estimate for third quarter GDP – but not holding my breath.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Curious Trade War Omission from the New York Fed

19 Monday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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(What's Left of) Our Economy, China, exports, Made in Washington trade flows, manufacturing, New York Fed, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Trump

If you were writing an economics blog item for a major government institution in America, and your subject was a trend that for two years now has been a major controversy in America, wouldn’t you include information on how that trend actually was affecting America?

Not apparently if you’re Hunter L. Clark, and you work for the New York branch of the Federal Reserve system – which hasn’t exactly been shy about weighing in on this controversy (President Trump’s tariffs on China) before (See, e.g., here and here.) Even more unusual: that previous New York Fed contribution to the trade war debate had emphatically concluded that the President’s policies have been an abject failure. Had this new item presented U.S.-relevant data, the clear conclusion would have been that the trade war has succeeded in at least one crucial respect.

Specifically, in a post last Friday, Clark wrote on how China’s export performance so far this year has been “supercharged” by the CCP Virus pandemic (which of course originated in one of its major cities).

Clark also noted various (convincing) reasons that this surge might be temporary, and even observed that some other counties had actually out-performed China export-wise. But China’s exports to the United States – which of course the tariffs (along with the rest of the President’s trade policies) aimed to curb and ultimately reduce) – went completely unmentioned. And that’s an awfully odd omission because combining Clark’s figures with readily available U.S. Census data shows that this wave of China export increases completely missed the United States.

According to Clark, compared with the same quarters last year, China’s overall goods exports this year “slightly increased in the second quarter and are currently forecast to grow by close to 6 percent in the third and fourth quarters of this year.” He italicized “increased” because forecasts generally expected a ten percent decline in Chinese overseas sales during these periods.

But despite that slight increase in China’s global merchandise exports between the second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, during that year, official U.S. data show that these exports to the United States fell by 6.67 percent. And in contrast to the six percent improvement in China’s worldwide exports between the third quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of this year, its exports to the United States were down by 2.98 percent.

Also relevant to the trade war debate – did the Trump tariffs simply result in shifting the makeup of U.S. imports from China to other countries, therefore accomplishing nothing (at best) economically for the nation according to one of the Trump’s (and Trumpers’) favorite scorecards? Clark more reasonably doesn’t investigate this question, but the official American data make the Trump record look awfully good according to this standard, too.

As known by RealityChek regulars, the best global proxy for U.S.-China goods trade is U.S. non-oil China goods trade, and that’s especially true on the import side, since the United States buys no oil from China. And the numbers for this “Made in Washington” import flow (so named because commerce in these goods is strongly influenced by government trade policy) make clear that, whatever import shifting has taken place hasn’t prevented overall U.S. purchases of these foreign products from falling also.

Between the second quarter of 2019 and the second quarter of 2020, they fell by a whopping 18.92 percent. Since the U.S. September trade figures won’t be out until early next month, full third quarter results aren’t yet available. But on a July-August basis, these global Made in Washington imports were off by 2.13 percent.

These subjects, moreover, clearly are of more than academic or political score-settling interest. Despite facing the same CCP Virus-induced disruptions as the rest of the economy, domestic manufacturing – which is heavily exposed to Chinese and other foreign competition – has held up well. In inflation-adjusted terms, it’s production from its February peak through September is down just over six percent. Employment has been relatively resilient, too, along with capital spending.

Imagine how much worse its troubles would have been if it experienced the kind of Chinese export flood that’s washed over other economies. Indeed, this counter-factual seems eminently worthy of study. Including by the New York Fed.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Some Fishy New Official U.S. Trade Figures

30 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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Commerce Department, exports, GDP, goods trade, gross domestic product, imports, real GDP, services trade, Trade, trade deficit, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Life as a blogger just gets more unpredictable all the time. Here I was this morning all set to try to figure out whether I’d write about the presidential debate last night or about the official new overall U.S. economic growth (actually contraction) numbers or about the official new figures for how domestic manufacturing fared. And I find my interest most piqued by apparent mistakes in those overall data on the shrinkage of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the second quarter.

As RealityChek regulars know, when I cover the GDP figures (which tell us how much in the way of goods and services the U.S. economy has turned out in a given time period, and how it’s changed over time), I tend to focus on the trade numbers that help make up these total figures. And I like to look at revisions, because the U.S. Commerce Department, which tracks these trends, doesn’t get it right the first time, or even the second time (because new information is being constantly received), and because it’s right up front about making these imperfections clear. (That’s why several revisions of these data are issued in the first place.)

Today’s report on the economy’s performance in the second quarter of this year was the third such report, and the final verdict for the time being. (So-called “benchmark” revisions will be coming down the road, going back several years, which speaks volumes about Commerce’s determination to get it right.)

And the “headline” trade number showed that between the first quarter and the second quarter, the total U.S. trade deficit declined from $788.0 billion to $775.1 billion. (All these trade figures are adjusted for inflation and presented at annual rates.) That’s an improvement. But it’s not as much of an improvement as the previous GDP report showed. According to that release, which came out about a month ago, the total second quarter real annualized trade deficit was $760.9 billion.

Or was it?

I can’t recount exactly what spurred me to look into the underlying figures, as opposed to taking the data’s accuracy for granted, as I normally do. But I began to check them out. And here’s what I found for that previous set of second quarter figures.

Last month’s GDP report judged that after-inflation U.S. goods exports for the second quarter totaled $1.3519 trillion annualized and U.S. goods imports were $2.3487 trillion. To get the balance, subtract second number from the first and you get a deficit of $996.8 billion.

For services, the second quarter results were previously reported as price-adjusted exports of $591.5 billion and imports of $372.8 billion. Doing the arithmetic produces a real services trade surplus of $218.7 billion.

To get the total trade deficit, the $218.7 billion services surplus has to be subtracted from the $996.8 billion goods deficit. And that number comes out to -$778.1 billion – not -$760.9 billion.

This difference is by no means major. But if my math is accurate, it reveals a final (for now) inflation-adjusted second quarter trade deficit that improved sligthly over the previously reported figure, rather than worsened.

In other words, the previous GDP report estimated that the second quarter real trade deficit improved on the first quarter’s results by a margin of $788 billion to $760.9 billion. But it looks like it should have reported a much less impressive narrowing – to just $778.1 billion. As a result, the $775.1 billion second quarter trade deficit figure reported this morning is a slightly better number than the incorrect previous estimate – not a worse result, as that incorrectly reported previous number indicated.

But guess what? That latest second quarter figure doesn’t add up, either. Specifically, today’s report pegs combined U.S. goods and services exports at $1.9274 trillion in real terms on an annual basis, with goods exports judged to be $1.3472 trillion and services exports reported as $582.1 billion. Add them up and you get $1.9293 trillion, not $1.9274 trillion.

On the import side, the Commerce Department now says that the second quarter total is $2.7025 trillion annualized, and that it’s comprised of $2.3480 trillion worth of goods imports and $372.1 billion worth of services imports. That adds up to $2.7201 trillion, not $2.7025 trillion. As a result, the total trade deficit was actually $790.8 billion annualized, not $775.1 billion (the difference between the new $2.7201 trillion total import figure and the $1.9293 trillion total export number).

Therefore, not only did the real trade deficit total worsen over the figure reported last month (from $778.1 billion to $790.8 billion, not to the $775.1 billion reported today). It also worsened from the first quarter’s $788.0 billion number.

At which point, it pains me to report that that first quarter total doesn’t add up, either.

The bottom line for me is that I’ll keep reporting the headline trade figures as they’re presented in the GDP reports by the Commerce Department. But I’ll be even more cautious than usual about assuming that they’re even accurate in measuring changes of direction, much less precise amounts. And I’ll be wondering if the rest of the federal government’s economic data is any better – at least until I can figure out what’s going on here.

(What’s Left of Our Economy: The Case for Decoupling from China Just Got Even Stronger

28 Friday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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China, consumption, consumption-led growth, decoupling, domestic demand, double-circulation, export-led growth, exports, Financial Times, Michael Pettis, rebalancing, Reuters, semiconductors, tariffs, The Race to the Bottom, Trade, Trump, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Double-circulation is all the rage nowadays in China – or at least among its leaders. No, it’s not anything related to treating the CCP Virus and the blood system. It’s the idea that the People’s Republic needs to shift its economic model away from heavy reliance on growing by exporting to dependence on growing by supplying its own commercial entities and especially consumers.

Double-circulation also could well be seized on by supporters of the pre-Trump U.S. trade policy status quo for easing off on the high tariffs on literally hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods aimed at American markets. After all, if China needs to export less, logically anyway, it will also need to resort less to predatory tactics like intellectual property theft, massive subsidies, and technology extortion to juice these exports – whether they come from Chinese-owned entities or from foreign owned companies selling from China in foreign markets like America’s.

A China more focused on domestic demand might even give a break to foreigners trying to reach Chinese consumers, by giving Chinese households and commercial entities greater choices. But even though this point doesn’t follow as closely, the domestic consumption focus of double circulation could produce more opportunities for foreign producers and service providers anyway simply by putting more money in Chinese consumers’ pockets. If so, double circulation could make the Trump administration’s apparent aim to decouple the United States from China whoppingly self-defeating for American businesses and their workers. 

I haven’t bought the double circulation thesis – and its policy implications in particular – ever since I wrote my book on globalization and the U.S. economy, The Race to the Bottom, back in 2000. So I’m especially pleased to report that my case has just been reenforced by a genuinely excellent authority on the Chinese economy, and by the Chinese regime itself. Even better – these reenforcements also strongly support the apparent Trump administration objective of decoupling America’s economy from China’s.  

Just to be clear: At no time during the last twenty years have I doubted that, on the trajectory it was on, China would become much wealthier, and that the purchasing power of Chinese consumers would rise considerably. Moreover, there was no reason to believe that even the protectionists ruling in Beijing would want to shut imports out of the Chinese economy completely.

But I also had no doubt that, however much more the Chinese would consume in absolute terms, the economy’s export dependence would continue for the foreseeable future simply because Chinese incomes were starting from such meager levels. Therefore, the policy challenges created by the growing integration of the Chinese economy into the U.S. and larger global economies would continue as well – and actually intensify.

The reason? The combination of China’s rock-bottom purchasing power in absolute terms, its ambitious and understandable economic development goals, and its determination to advance them by hook or by crook, would keep confronting America and the world with a country that would long need to produce far more than it could consume in order to keep making economic progress.

For it would take decades at best before China’s population could absorb by itself the output needed to fuel Chinese economic development – or even close. The domestic market simply would remain too small. And since that excess output needed to be bought by someone, it needed to be sold overseas. In fact, Beijing would need to constrain the growth of domestic consumption, since in order to keep churning out the goods needed to power more production, most of the economy’s capital needed to be channeled to producers, not consumers.

And just this past week appeared two items strongly indicating that this analysis has always been and remains on target, and highly relevant to the decoupling debate 

The Chinese economy authority I’m talking about is Michael Pettis – who actually teaches at a Chinese university! In an August 25 Financial Times essay, Pettis made the following key points:

>”Double circulation” is nothing more than a fancy new term for “rebalancing” – and has been an officially proclaimed goal in China “since at least 2007.”

>Almost no progress has been made toward rebalancing: “The consumption share of Chinese GDP remains extraordinarily low, just two percentage points higher in 2019 than it was in 2007. Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, during this period China’s debt-to-GDP ratio doubled.”

>And that progress is largely to blame for China racking up so much debt. After all (and here, I’m reading between Pettis’ lines), since the global financial crisis broke out starting 2007-08, slower U.S. and global growth have tightly limited China’s export opportunities. But since even the country’s iron-fisted dictators couldn’t afford politically to antagonize the population by slowing living standards advances, Beijing needed to borrow on an immense scale, and spend most of this credit on an infrastructure binge that included too many unproductive white elephant projects.

>China’s debts are so big that they’re becoming unsustainable. The best way out – while keeping the population’s income progress reasonably intact – is to reignite exports. But – and here’s where Pettis (who details the problem in a new book) echoes my own analysis in an absolutely striking way – such efforts face a fatal contradiction:

“China’s export competitiveness…depends on ensuring that workers are allocated, whether by wages or the social safety net, a very low share of what they produce. China’s export strength, in other words, depends, at least in part, on the low share workers retain of what they produce.”

At the same time, “China can only rely on domestic consumption to drive a much greater share of growth if workers begin to receive a much higher share of what they produce, so the very process of rebalancing must undermine China’s export competitiveness.”

So putting the issue in the terms I’ve been using, and zeroing in on the policy implications – including hopes for the China market – however much Chinese incomes and purchasing power grow in absolute terms, continued Chinese economic progress still depends on its exports growing considerably faster. As a result, whatever U.S. and other foreign producers as a whole gain in selling goods made in their home countries to Chinese customers, they’re bound to lose more in their domestic markets to Chinese-made products. Of course, any number of individual firms will come out ahead. But their domestic economies consistently will come out behind.

Consequently (and these are my ideas, not Pettis’), whatever short-term disruptions, inefficiencies and therefore weakening of growth and employment take place in the course of pursuing decoupling, this strategy is essential for boosting output and employment in the United States over the longer-term, and for making sure that its own economic progress is sustainable – not to mention the decisive strategic benefits of reducing dependence on China in key industries.

The Chinese government confirmation of these China concerns and ideas of mine appeared in a Wednesday Reuters article on the country’s imports of semiconductors from around the world. The fact that they’re so huge (on a pace to top $300 billion this year for the third straight year, despite the Chinese economy’s partly CCP Virus-induced slowdown) is awfully interesting. So is their rapid growth – up from the $200 billion neighborhood in 2013.

But here’s what’s much more interesting, at least for the U.S. debate on China policy: the statement by the vice-chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association that “of the chips that China imported, about half would be exported eventually as they are incorporated into other products.”

It’s interesting and crucially important because it undercuts the claim that U.S.-China decoupling could backfire most of all on the companies relied on by America for so much of its technological competitiveness – the semiconductor companies.

The claim is based on the widespread view that these companies earn much, and in some cases most, of their global revenues in China. (See here for specific numbers.) And that’s indeed what they state in their financial reports.

But as the Chinese semiconductor vice-chairman just made clear, these figures are true only in the narrowest, technical sense. Specifically, when firms like Qualcomm or Intel sell a chip to an electronics company that manufactures or assembles in China, the transaction is recorded as a sale in China whose revenue comes from China.

But since half of the chips used in China go into products for export, it’s clear that in many cases, the end user – the ultimate source of the revenue – isn’t in China at all. It’s elsewhere, including prominently the United States.

Put differently, China isn’t simply, or even mainly, a customer itself for foreign-made, including U.S.-made, semiconductors. It’s largely an assembly location and export platform. It’s true that its electronics industry production base overall is now the world’s largest, that much of its output now consists of information technology products as well as consumer electronics, and that reproducing it elsewhere will take major, protracted effort. But the base itself – including China’s own semiconductor industry – could not have been built without the investments of foreign multinational companies. (See, e.g., here and here.) And if the multinationals can create such an immense complex in China, they can create one elsewhere, too, especially presented with the right policy carrots and sticks.

And by the way, the vice-chairman of the China Semiconductor Industry Association isn’t anything like an official from a typical industry association in a place like the United States. He’s a Chinese government official. So there you have it from the dragon’s mouth.

Neither the Pettis article nor the China semiconductor official’s remarks means that the United States should rush headlong into decoupling. But they do indicate that, particularly over the long-term, this dis-integration exercise will be an economic – as well as a national security – winner for Americans.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Trade Surprises in the New U.S. GDP Report

27 Thursday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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CCP Virus, Commerce Department, coronavirus, COVID 19, exports, GDP, goods trade, Great Recession, gross domestic product, imports, real GDP, recession, services trade, shutdowns, trade deficit, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

First, let’s get the obvious out of the way: The U.S. economy took such a huge hit during the second quarter of this year that the 36.87 percent nosedive in output sequentially at an annualized rate reported this morning by the Commerce Departent was actually slightly good news. Specifically, it represented an improvement over the plunge estimated in last month’s advance read on the gross domestic product (GDP) – nearly 38 percent. Talk about a low bar!

(Just FYI, the above figures differ from what the Commerce Department itself has calculated and the media have reported. Mine are based on taking the second quarter annualized figure (in this case) of $17.2822 trillion in inflation-adjusted terms (the most closely watched of the GDP statistics) subtracting it from the first quarter figure ($19.0108 trillion), and then multiplying by four.)

Now for the less obvious: The GDP figures, which of course are historically awful because of the CCP Virus-induced shutdowns (and therefore maybe not very good measures of the economy’s underlying condition) keep producing noteworthy surprises on the trade front.

Specifically, last month’s initial Commerce Department GDP release pegged the inflation-adjusted trade deficit at $780.7 billion at an annual rate. This morning’s number was down to $760.9 billion. That’s a big revision, and it means that since the first quarter, the gap has narrowed not by the 3.71 percent estimated last month, but 13.76 percent – more than 3.7 times more! This shortfall, moreover, was the lowest since the second quarter of 2016’s $745.2 billion.

Interestingly, the main source of the improvement was on the goods side. Service sectors – which have suffered the most during the pandemic period because so many depend on human contact of some kind or other – saw their trade results barely budge from the previous estimates for the second quarter.

At the same time, let’s not overlook one stunning services trade-related result. As was the case with that previous second quarter services import figure of $372.7 billion annualized, this morning’s $372.8 billion result was the lowest in more than fourteen years, when the fourth quarter 2005 services import figure came in at $368.4 billion.

As for the rest of the components of inflation-adjusted U.S. trade flows (all annualized):

Second quarter U.S. total exports were revised up 0.60 percent, from $1.9316 trillion to $1.9431 trillion. That quarterly total was still the lowest since the first quarter of 2010 ($1.9026 trillion) – early in the recovery from the Great Recession of 2007-09.

Second 2Q total imports were revised down 0.30 percent, from $2.7123 trillion to $2.7040 trillion – the lowest since the third quarter of 2011 ($2.6970 trillion).

Second quarter goods exports were revised up 0.99 percent, from $1.3386 trillion to $1.3519 trillion. But that’s also the lowest such number since the first quarter of 2010 – which was exactly the same!

Second quarter goods imports of $2.3575 trillion represented a 0.37 percent upward revision from the previously reported $2.3487 trillion. That’s the smallest such figure since the second quarter of 2013 ($2.3381 trillion).

Second quarter services exports are now judged to have been $591.5 billion – just 0.12 percent lower than the first estimate of $592.2 billion – and the worst such total since the first quarter of 2010’s $586.8 billion.

And finally, that new second quarter services imports figure of $372.8 billion is virtually unchanged from the previous estimate of $327.7 billion. But again – it’s a nearly 15-year low.

For the time being, there’s one more second quarter GDP estimate to come from the Commerce Department – about a month from now. Then we’ll be getting into the reports for the third quarter, which is widely thought to have witnessed a strong but far from complete rebound in the economy. I for one can’t wait to see if those numbers produce any comparable trade surprises – and if so, what kind.

Those Stubborn Facts: China’s Losing the Trade Wars Globally, Too

26 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Those Stubborn Facts

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China, exports, Financial Times, globalization, supply chain, Those Stubborn Facts, Trade, trade wars

China’s share of total world goods exports, 2018: 25 percent

China’s share of total world goods exports, 2019: 22 percent

(Source: “China’s share of global exports falls in supply chains rethink,” by Kathrin Hille, Financial Times, August 17, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/bfef2854-f8f3-4ce6-a00f-3b11123b01e8)

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: Mixed U.S. Trade News for June – but Little Good on China or Manufacturing

05 Wednesday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, exports, global financial crisis, goods, Great Recession, imports, manufacturing, merchandise trade, Phase One, Trade, trade deficit, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

This morning’s report from the Census Bureau on the newest (June) monthly U.S. trade figures is classic mixed bag – at best. The combined goods and services deficit came down for the first time since February, and a several new export growth records were set. Yet the results in China goods and manufacturing trade disappointed and the export records come with big asterisks – the strong growth followed much steeper CCP Virus-related nosedives.

The total U.S. trade gap narrowed by 7.48 percent on month in June, from May’s upwardly revised $54.80 billion to $50.70 billion. The results brought this trade deficit down 16.86 percent year-to-date – from $297.45 billion to $274.31 billion.

The monthly improvement was led by an all-time best 9.38 percent jump in exports – from $144.69 billion to $158.25 billion. (The data, which go back to 1992, show that the previous record was 8.52 percent, set in February, 1994.)

All the same, the June monthly goods and services export total was still the third lowest (after the April and May figures) since August, 2010’s $157.77 billion. In this vein, the June export advance needs to be seen in the context of the all-time worst 31.67 percent cratering of exports that occurred between February and May. Indeed, this three-month nosedive dwarfed that experienced during the gloomiest three months of the Great Recession that followed the global financial crisis (17.12 percent between October, 2008 and January, 2009). Moreover, total exports are down 15.75 percent on a January-June basis.

As for total imports, they rose 4.74 percent sequentially in June from an upwardly revised $199.49 billion to $208.95 billion. The increase, while not as historic as that for exports, was nonetheless the biggest since March. 2015’s 6.71 percent (also affected by natural disruption – that winter’s blizzards).

Yet virus-related distortions were clearly at work here, too, as the June import increase followed a 19.05 percent drop in total U.S. purchases from abroad between February and May. (Interestingly, the Great Recession’s greatest three-month import fall-off was a slightly larger 22.32 percent – and as with exports, took place between October, 2008 and January, 2009.)

For flows of goods specifically, the 5.29 percent June decline in the trade deficit (from an upwardly revised $76.18 billion in May to $72.15 billion) was also the first monthly decrease since February.

June’s 14.49 percent monthly advance in goods exports was another record – significantly exceeding the 9.01 percent registered in March, 1994. Even so, this impressive performance represented another incomplete recovery from a virus-related blow. For it came on the heels of a 35.01 percent collapse in these shipments between February and June – a fall-off much bigger than that seen between the Great Recessionary period between October, 2008 and January, 2009 (21.51 percent).

So it shouldn’t be surprising that June’s $102.87 billion goods export figure was the third lowest (again, after April and May) since April, 2010. Moreover, on a year-to-date basis, goods exports are 16.74 percent below 2019’s levels.

Goods imports were up 5.42 percent month-to-month in June. As with total trade, this change was considerably smaller than that for exports, and below the record of 7.78 percent set in March, 2015. (Those blizzards again.) But it, too, was CCP Virus-distorted, since it followed a 16.42 percent fall from Feb. through May.

The US-#China goods #trade deficit rose by 6.46% on-month in June, from $26.96 billion $28.40 billion. The only good news embedded in this result is that the monthly rate of growth slowed maredly from May’s 19.99 percent. The June number, moreover, was the highest since last October’s $31.26 billion.

Most discouraging – U.S. merchandise goods exports to the recovering economy of the People’s Republic were down 4.14%, month-to-month, from $9.64 billion to $9.24 billion. Especially important – overall U.S. goods sales to China on a January-June basis are running nearly 16 percent below their 2017 level, the baseline year for judging Beijing’s U.S. import commitments under the Phase One trade deal. The total import number doesn’t necessarily mean that China is way behind on this pledge, since it covered many specific sectors of the economy. But so many sectors are covered that the lag does raise important treaty violation questions.

U.S goods imports from China rose 2.85 percent sequentially in June, from $36.60 billion to $37.64 has also slowed significantly from the 17.79% monthly jump in May and the nearly 57 percent surge in April. That month’s performance reflected the restart of China’s factories following widespread CCP Virus-related shutdowns that depressed these sales to the US by 40.49 percent between January and March.

Manufacturing’s June trade figures were even worse. The deficit increase 5.30 percent over May’s $84.68 billion total, and the new $89.16 billion mark was the biggest since last October’s $92.70 billion.

Between May and June, manufacturing exports grew a healthy 15.46 percent, from $61.88 billion to $71.45 billion. But the much greater amount of imports expanded strongly as well, from $146.55 billion to $160.61 billion, or 9.59 percent.

Year-to-date, though, the manufacturing trade deficit is off by 4.53 percent, with exports running 17.17 percent below comparable 2019 levels and imports 11.24 percent less.

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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

Smaulgld

Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver

Reclaim the American Dream

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles

David Stockman's Contra Corner

Washington Decoded

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Upon Closer inspection

Keep America At Work

Sober Look

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Credit Writedowns

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GubbmintCheese

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

New Economic Populist

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

George Magnus

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

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