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Digging a Hole to China
August 23, 2019
China and Intellectual Property
Binary Thinking
The Trade Deficit Is Not a Scorecard
Bilateral Trade Balances—Whack-A-Mole?
I Need a Vacation from My Vacation
Good news: The trade war is over. No, it’s getting worse. Or maybe it is ending but it could start again tomorrow.
Confused? All of the above were true at various points in the last few weeks. Markets bounced around in reaction. And we are still no closer to knowing how it will all end.
Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway) this uncertainty has a chilling effect on business investment. If you are considering whether to spend billions on new manufacturing capacity, opening stores, or hiring new employees, you need to know your costs and have reliable supply chains. That is all but impossible with tariff rates going up, down, or sideways depending on the day.
The saddest part is that the world trading system does, indeed, have serious problems, many of which emanate from China. We need to fix them. I fully support that goal. I am glad we have an administration that takes Chinese behavior seriously. But the tariff strategy is making the situation worse, not better, and the focus on trade deficits is entirely misplaced.
This will be a potentially incendiary letter, but sometimes things just need to be said. But first, I want to call attention to one of our gifted young writers at Mauldin Economics, Jared Dillian, and give you a chance to read him for free. That’s because, like the old potato chip commercial, I bet you can’t eat just one.
Jared writes a daily newsletter called The Daily Dirtnap. When I first heard the letter name, I thought, “Really?” But that was me not...
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