"Why should we build a plant in the US to manufacture widgets when even after lower taxes and regulation, it’s cheaper to operate that plant outside the US? No doubt, “America first” but what’s the real cost of that, and are we better off using America’s resources to do something else?"
So, I'm fairly free trade, more so than most. But this question does have some answers. I can think of two that are distinct enough to mention separately.
One, and we got a good example during C19, if it's not inside your borders you don't control it. You need a bunch of antibiotics made in India? Well, too bad. India gets to decide that. It doesn't matter as much in "normal" times, but who is to say what is normal? Do we even have a normal these days? Certainly we can't count on things being normal when we are making plans for high inflation since the who point is risk mitigation. Maybe there is some incident with Taiwan and now the US just can't get anything made in China. Who knows.
I was reminded of this semi-recently (2023?) when a stock I owned (SQM) took around a 10% single day hit after Chili nationalized one (or more?) of the lithium mines they "owned". Also pertinent since you specifically mention mining stocks as a possible inflation hedge.
Everyone says it will never happen and then it does. 2023 isn't that long ago.
The second is IP theft. I'm not picking on China specifically but I'll use them as representative. You send a part out to be plastic molded, what exactly is your "value add" once they have the mold and it's running smooth? Maybe they just run some extra parts and put their logo on it? And what are you going to do about it anyway?
I think we take something like "rule of law" for granted and it's not really so. Then people are all "inconceivable!" when it does happen. It's not actually that inconceivable.
Germany recently learned that lesson most painfully with Russian natural gas.
Anyway. Not to detract from your general point, but when building up that cost benefit matrix, lets just make sure we don't completely ignore these very real costs. There are probably others, these are just the ones that came to my mind.
There is no "we" as a country, thankfully. These are commercial choices made by companies, not the US government. Political risk has always played a role in corporate investments. Natural resource appropriation is a story as old as mining/extraction itself. The Chinese have been ripping off IP for decades, but companies have explicitly tolerated the costs because they believed the benefits exceeded those costs. There is a case that companies have underestimated these risks. One can see companies adjusting their sourcing strategies to adapt to the current world.
Is anyone aware of any economist's work/papers on what point they think the fiscal debt will reach the point of starting to collapse our economy?
That may seem like an odd question, but I have heard the fiscal alarms for a couple decades now, and we always seem to press on. The last few years it feels like the politicians just gave up and decided to give something away to everyone with total disregard for any budgetary restraint.
I think we are all watching this in a state of numbness, but what do the economists say about when the fireworks are going to get started with a fiscal implosion?
Thing about being the reserve currency is you can export inflation. We can do this because we are the cleanest dirty shirt. It will take BRICS getting their act together and creating an alternative based on a market basket of real stuff and redeemable for same. Then gravity happens and we are like Will E. Coyote looking down.
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena. The simple answer to stop inflation is to take money out of the system. No more FED purchases - which is currently the case, but who knows if that will last - it needs to become permanent outside of lender of last resort happening. Next step take cash out of the economy forcefully. That is actually easy. The FED needs to start auctioning off its portfolio at massive losses in order to induce the public to purchase that debt, now. By doing so, the cash held is directly reduced by the amount sold. And since currently the FED is sitting still on $7 trillion, it has lots of ability to remove cash from the system. 20% loss - who cares, you still remove over $5 trillion of cash from the system. Also - it would be great if congress actually did its job and cut spending, but not holding my breath. But if the markets know the FED will not buy treasury's anymore congress will see the results pretty quickly when interest rates hit 15% again because the market knows the FED will not be intervening. Again, debt has to have a real cost in order for the smart people to take over because the stupid people won't want to be blamed for the harm.
It is fair to say that inflation is here to say iof the Democrats are here to stay. But another Reagan-like doer with strong Friedman disciples would fight it back. So the precursor is closing the border, establishing integrity in elections and not electing Democrats. So yes. It is here to stay.
" Owning the commodity exchanges is also a good way to play it since their volumes should explode"...could you discuss the reasons why volumes would explode in an inflationary environment? Thanks
Two reasons. First, 2 exchanges dominate, ICE/CME. Virtually every hard commodity is traded at one of those two and commodity volumes should increase with the increase in prices. Low prices means no incentive to hedge etc.
Secondly, CME is the interest rate exchange and with higher interest rates, volume will explode.
They are fixed cost businesses. Very few variable costs.
Only so much as the world "perceives" it to be. Frankly, leaving our currency strength up to the perceptions of the rest of world with the collective actions, thoughts and crap that comes out of so many of these countries does not allow me to sleep that easy at night.
"We" have been boxed in for a while. There's no easy way out and there will be costs for everyone. This is one of the few detailed realistic plans I've seen:
As far as inflation goes, 1) it's got to be true that the attitudes and expectations play a larger role than believed before. Pols have been driving the deficits up before Biden and inflation stayed low., 2) the current round of inflation was worldwide and the US did better than most others.
Finally, George Bush was the worst president of our lifetimes. I voted for him twice. Incompetence in Afghanistan. Total blow-out failure in Iraq. Huge opportunity costs for both time and money. Then during the financial crisis the bailouts. "I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system…to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse." BS. Jimmy Carter at least deregulated the airlines.
I think a fair amount of today's cultural insanity is due to what Bush did. Not to mention the start of the dissolution of the 20th century Republican Party. The Iraq war created a lot of internal dissent that persisted long after. And as I said the bailouts were bad, with lingering effects. Not to mention the precursor of Sarbanes-Oxley. He failed at Social Security changes. The only big good thing he did was PEPFAR, with the benefits going to the Africans.
Many people blame Gingrich for the contentiousness we see today, but I’m not sure I buy that simply because during Gingrich’s leadership of the Rs, the party took the majority in the House for the fist time in 40 years and only the third time in 68 years.
That shift alone upset the apple cart for so, so many.
Agreed about the blame, but it strikes me as silly. Democrats always blame the GOP any time there is a small modicum of resistance to their extreme Leftward shift. Republicans are thus labeled (libeled?) as "contentious" or even "fascist" or "dictators." There is no mention that Republicans were properly elected by people who want their policies enacted and have a legitimate mandate to do so.
This is the Democrats' propaganda game, where they sow the chaos and the discomfort, and then say, "see, if you don't elect Republicans then this chaos wouldn't exist."
I'm guessing you don't fall for it, nor do many of the posters here.
"Why should we build a plant in the US to manufacture widgets when even after lower taxes and regulation, it’s cheaper to operate that plant outside the US? No doubt, “America first” but what’s the real cost of that, and are we better off using America’s resources to do something else?"
So, I'm fairly free trade, more so than most. But this question does have some answers. I can think of two that are distinct enough to mention separately.
One, and we got a good example during C19, if it's not inside your borders you don't control it. You need a bunch of antibiotics made in India? Well, too bad. India gets to decide that. It doesn't matter as much in "normal" times, but who is to say what is normal? Do we even have a normal these days? Certainly we can't count on things being normal when we are making plans for high inflation since the who point is risk mitigation. Maybe there is some incident with Taiwan and now the US just can't get anything made in China. Who knows.
I was reminded of this semi-recently (2023?) when a stock I owned (SQM) took around a 10% single day hit after Chili nationalized one (or more?) of the lithium mines they "owned". Also pertinent since you specifically mention mining stocks as a possible inflation hedge.
Everyone says it will never happen and then it does. 2023 isn't that long ago.
The second is IP theft. I'm not picking on China specifically but I'll use them as representative. You send a part out to be plastic molded, what exactly is your "value add" once they have the mold and it's running smooth? Maybe they just run some extra parts and put their logo on it? And what are you going to do about it anyway?
I think we take something like "rule of law" for granted and it's not really so. Then people are all "inconceivable!" when it does happen. It's not actually that inconceivable.
Germany recently learned that lesson most painfully with Russian natural gas.
Anyway. Not to detract from your general point, but when building up that cost benefit matrix, lets just make sure we don't completely ignore these very real costs. There are probably others, these are just the ones that came to my mind.
There is no "we" as a country, thankfully. These are commercial choices made by companies, not the US government. Political risk has always played a role in corporate investments. Natural resource appropriation is a story as old as mining/extraction itself. The Chinese have been ripping off IP for decades, but companies have explicitly tolerated the costs because they believed the benefits exceeded those costs. There is a case that companies have underestimated these risks. One can see companies adjusting their sourcing strategies to adapt to the current world.
This is a great comment, thank you.
Is anyone aware of any economist's work/papers on what point they think the fiscal debt will reach the point of starting to collapse our economy?
That may seem like an odd question, but I have heard the fiscal alarms for a couple decades now, and we always seem to press on. The last few years it feels like the politicians just gave up and decided to give something away to everyone with total disregard for any budgetary restraint.
I think we are all watching this in a state of numbness, but what do the economists say about when the fireworks are going to get started with a fiscal implosion?
The report I linked above has some commentary on trends.
https://manhattan.institute/article/a-comprehensive-federal-budget-plan-to-avert-a-debt-crisis-2024
Thing about being the reserve currency is you can export inflation. We can do this because we are the cleanest dirty shirt. It will take BRICS getting their act together and creating an alternative based on a market basket of real stuff and redeemable for same. Then gravity happens and we are like Will E. Coyote looking down.
A pickle we are in.
Batten down the hatches
Help us Javier Milei! You’re our only hope! Chainsaw Revolution!
Not all deflation is bad. And it depends on whom it affects and how.
Batten down the hatches, landlubber!
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena. The simple answer to stop inflation is to take money out of the system. No more FED purchases - which is currently the case, but who knows if that will last - it needs to become permanent outside of lender of last resort happening. Next step take cash out of the economy forcefully. That is actually easy. The FED needs to start auctioning off its portfolio at massive losses in order to induce the public to purchase that debt, now. By doing so, the cash held is directly reduced by the amount sold. And since currently the FED is sitting still on $7 trillion, it has lots of ability to remove cash from the system. 20% loss - who cares, you still remove over $5 trillion of cash from the system. Also - it would be great if congress actually did its job and cut spending, but not holding my breath. But if the markets know the FED will not buy treasury's anymore congress will see the results pretty quickly when interest rates hit 15% again because the market knows the FED will not be intervening. Again, debt has to have a real cost in order for the smart people to take over because the stupid people won't want to be blamed for the harm.
It is fair to say that inflation is here to say iof the Democrats are here to stay. But another Reagan-like doer with strong Friedman disciples would fight it back. So the precursor is closing the border, establishing integrity in elections and not electing Democrats. So yes. It is here to stay.
" Owning the commodity exchanges is also a good way to play it since their volumes should explode"...could you discuss the reasons why volumes would explode in an inflationary environment? Thanks
Two reasons. First, 2 exchanges dominate, ICE/CME. Virtually every hard commodity is traded at one of those two and commodity volumes should increase with the increase in prices. Low prices means no incentive to hedge etc.
Secondly, CME is the interest rate exchange and with higher interest rates, volume will explode.
They are fixed cost businesses. Very few variable costs.
Thanks!
At this point, after 50 plus years of non-gold back funny money, the question perhaps is are we in something of a doom loop with our fiat currency?
not sure about that. King Dollar will still be king.
Only so much as the world "perceives" it to be. Frankly, leaving our currency strength up to the perceptions of the rest of world with the collective actions, thoughts and crap that comes out of so many of these countries does not allow me to sleep that easy at night.
"We" have been boxed in for a while. There's no easy way out and there will be costs for everyone. This is one of the few detailed realistic plans I've seen:
https://manhattan.institute/article/a-comprehensive-federal-budget-plan-to-avert-a-debt-crisis-2024
As far as inflation goes, 1) it's got to be true that the attitudes and expectations play a larger role than believed before. Pols have been driving the deficits up before Biden and inflation stayed low., 2) the current round of inflation was worldwide and the US did better than most others.
Finally, George Bush was the worst president of our lifetimes. I voted for him twice. Incompetence in Afghanistan. Total blow-out failure in Iraq. Huge opportunity costs for both time and money. Then during the financial crisis the bailouts. "I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system…to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse." BS. Jimmy Carter at least deregulated the airlines.
fair point, but Biden/Carter were probably worse since the pain they inflicted was inside the country not outside the country
By his bungling, W set us up for Obama.
I think a fair amount of today's cultural insanity is due to what Bush did. Not to mention the start of the dissolution of the 20th century Republican Party. The Iraq war created a lot of internal dissent that persisted long after. And as I said the bailouts were bad, with lingering effects. Not to mention the precursor of Sarbanes-Oxley. He failed at Social Security changes. The only big good thing he did was PEPFAR, with the benefits going to the Africans.
I don't think Bush was the cause of the cultural stuff, but his successor was!
True. I read a theory that the modern BS started during Clinton and was largely a result of Gingrich. I think that probably correct.
I think Mr. Carter was referring to Obama, as he was Bush's "successor."
He was, and he was President Division.
Many people blame Gingrich for the contentiousness we see today, but I’m not sure I buy that simply because during Gingrich’s leadership of the Rs, the party took the majority in the House for the fist time in 40 years and only the third time in 68 years.
That shift alone upset the apple cart for so, so many.
Agreed about the blame, but it strikes me as silly. Democrats always blame the GOP any time there is a small modicum of resistance to their extreme Leftward shift. Republicans are thus labeled (libeled?) as "contentious" or even "fascist" or "dictators." There is no mention that Republicans were properly elected by people who want their policies enacted and have a legitimate mandate to do so.
This is the Democrats' propaganda game, where they sow the chaos and the discomfort, and then say, "see, if you don't elect Republicans then this chaos wouldn't exist."
I'm guessing you don't fall for it, nor do many of the posters here.