2010-11-25

The coming trade conflict with China

A good article in the South China Morning Post lays out the case. Social mood definitely favors increasing conflict.

China steals jobs from West, says economist
With unemployment in the United States running at 9.6 per cent, populist anger would soon "boil over", he said, adding: "America will threaten tariffs against China as a way of trying to get China to change its policies."
The he is Roger Bootle, "a special adviser to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee and former chief economist at HSBC." He's exactly right about the coming conflict and he's right when he goes on to explain that China relies on exports because Chinese policy has favored exports. A reform of the system would mitigate the problem...but the government may not like the solution...
Brian Jackson, a Hong Kong-based economic strategist for RBC Capital Markets, said Beijing was not highly motivated to give mainland consumers more spending power. He said policymakers would prefer to control the economy by retaining most of the country's cash in state coffers, to be spent at planners' will on economic stimulus projects such as infrastructure upgrades.

Putting more money in consumers' pockets "would require a real shift in mentality", Jackson said. "It is harder to achieve the [growth] targets if you are relying on consumers to make up their own minds about whether to spend their money and what they spend it on."

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