China

With the Fed talking up the likelihood of three rate hikes in 2017 while other central banks are still in easing mode, the potential for a US dollar rout and a concomitant closing of the US trade deficit is pretty low. Therefore, given…

This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about Donald Trump and confirmation bias. But it’s going to be a different beast altogether because here’s where I am going to lay out my thinking about Trump and trade. Let me cut to the chase. I…

On Monday, I wrote a piece outlining how the US has pivoted away from China toward Russia. And the conclusion I drew from the circumstances was that this pivot will create a lot of geopolitical and economic uncertainty depending both on the…

I have heard some commentators say that the concern over a strong dollar is overblown. I don't think it is. In the context of heightened tensions with China, the strength of the US dollar will be a key issue affecting Asia in particular. I…

Ever since Donald Trump unexpectedly won the US presidential election, there has been an unending stream of anti-Trump tirades in the media. The emotions creating this wave of criticism make it difficult to have a reality-based view of the…

China’s success will depend on the extent to which Beijing in 2016 is able to centralize power, to begin to sell off government assets (probably local and provincial, and not central, government assets), to rein in credit growth, and to…

This post was originally published at China Financial Markets. By Michael Pettis Foreign perceptions about the Chinese economy are far more volatile than the economy itself, and are spread across a fantastic array of forecasts. On one…

Yesterday, China announced one of the most important tax reforms of the past twenty years. It is replacing a business tax on gross revenue for non-manufacturing companies with a VAT. Manufacturing companies have been subject to a VAT…

US and global economic growth is slowing. And this has caught the Fed out given its rate hike in December. The question, now, therefore is whether the Fed continues to hike in the face of this slowing, given the election looming in…

The Fed began to tighten monetary policy in May 2013, when it announced its intention to taper large scale asset purchases. Despite Fed chair Janet Yellen’s recognition in recent testimony before Congress that financial conditions had…