Neil Irwin on Donald Trump’s Trade Scorecard

March 27, 2016

27 Marzo 2016

Neil Irwin takes issue with Donald Trump using the trade surplus between countries as a scorecard on trade. He is largely right with a couple of important qualifications. Irwin notes that a country with a trade surplus should see its currency rise against the dollar if it doesn’t reinvest the money in dollar assets. He then comments that if it does reinvest the money in dollar assets, whether or not it benefits the United States depends on what the money is used for. As Irwin points out, in the last decade the money was used in large part to invest in residential housing and to inflate the housing bubble. This was of course not useful. But there is a deeper point here. In an era of “secular stagnation,” which means there is not enough demand in the economy, the foreign assets may in effect be invested in nothing. Most of the foreign capital that went into the United States in the housing bubble years did not get directly invested in housing. It was invested in government bonds and short-term deposits. These investments don’t directly create any jobs; they are simply assets on a balance sheet. Insofar as foreigners invest their surplus dollars in U.S. assets not directly linked to employment (which will generally be the case) a trade deficit will be associated with higher unemployment, unless the economy has some other force generating employment to offset it. Currently we are running an annual trade deficit of around $540 billion (@ 3 percent of GDP). This could be offset by spending more on education, infrastructure, clean technology or other areas, but the Very Serious People will not let us run larger budget deficits. In that context, it is quite reasonable to link a trade deficit to higher unemployment, so Trump is not wrong in that respect.

Prescription Drugs and the Trans-Pacific Partnership: Big Pharma Hit by Skills Shortage

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 26, 2016

26 Marzo 2016

According to a Foreign Affairs piece by Council on Foreign Relations Fellow Thomas Bollyky, the major pharmaceutical companies are being run by people who don’t know what they are doing. While they have devoted a large amount of time and resources to putting strong language on patent and related protections in U.S. trade agreements, including the recently concluded Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Bollyky claims that these deals really don’t have much impact on drug prices in the partner countries. If Bollyky is right, the executives of Pfizer, Merck, and other major drug companies are just wasting energy that could be better devoted to other pursuits. Unfortunately, Bollyky’s piece seems more designed to push the TPP than to seriously examine the extent to which drug prices in the member countries are likely to be affected by the deal. His main method for establishing his case is to look at past trade agreements that imposed tighter patent and related protections for prescription drugs and show that there was no sharp jump in drug prices immediately following the signing of an agreement. This is not a surprise. In most cases, the rules in these agreements will only apply to new drugs, and even then to a subset of new drugs, for example patent protection for a drug that is a combination of already approved drugs. They may also allow for the extension of patent terms beyond the date where they would have expired under pre-trade deal rules, but here again the impact will only be felt gradually over time. Furthermore, the date of a trade deal with the United States may not be the key factor in pushing up drug prices. The United States signed a deal with South Korea in 2012 that required stronger patent and related protections, but most of these conditions were already law as of 2009 due to a trade agreement Korea signed with the European Union. Apparently the executives of European drug companies also waste their time trying to impose these rules in trade deals.

Workers Regain Part of Recession Losses, as Wage Share Rises

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 25, 2016

25 Marzo 2016

The wage share of GDP has recovered close to half of the ground lost in the downturn. Combining economy-wide wages and corporate profits, the wage share fell by 3.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. The data for 2015 show that the wage share has increased by 1.6 percentage points since its trough in 2012. This indicates that a tighter labor market is now allowing workers to achieve some gains at the expense of corporate profits.

This means a huge amount for Federal Reserve Board policy going forward. If the Fed raises interest rates to slow growth and job creation, it can prevent workers from recovering the ground they lost in the downturn.

It is striking that only one presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, has raised this issue. The others have for some reason chosen not to discuss the Federal Reserve Board and its impact on workers’ living standards. (Senator Ted Cruz has discussed the Fed, but said that he wants to bring the gold standard. This would prevent the Fed from taking any steps to boost the economy in a downturn.)

The wage share of GDP has recovered close to half of the ground lost in the downturn. Combining economy-wide wages and corporate profits, the wage share fell by 3.6 percentage points between 2007 and 2012. The data for 2015 show that the wage share has increased by 1.6 percentage points since its trough in 2012. This indicates that a tighter labor market is now allowing workers to achieve some gains at the expense of corporate profits.

This means a huge amount for Federal Reserve Board policy going forward. If the Fed raises interest rates to slow growth and job creation, it can prevent workers from recovering the ground they lost in the downturn.

It is striking that only one presidential candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders, has raised this issue. The others have for some reason chosen not to discuss the Federal Reserve Board and its impact on workers’ living standards. (Senator Ted Cruz has discussed the Fed, but said that he wants to bring the gold standard. This would prevent the Fed from taking any steps to boost the economy in a downturn.)

AP Wants Us to Be Worried that Workers are Making Back Ground Lost During the Recession

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 25, 2016

25 Marzo 2016

Seriously, that is what they said, more or less. An AP news article on the latest revision to fourth quarter GDP data told readers:

“Friday’s report also contained a potentially worrisome sign — a weak first estimate of corporate profits. It showed that pretax profits fell 7.8 percent in the fourth quarter after a 1.6 percent drop in the third quarter. Fourth quarter profits were also down 11.5 percent from a year earlier — the steepest annual drop since 30.8 percent plunge in the fourth quarter of 2008 at the depths of the financial crisis.”

It is not clear what about this drop in corporate profits is supposed to be worrisome. Corporate profits had risen at the expense of wages during the downturn. The profit share of national income is still well above its pre-recession level. Companies continue to have more profit than they know what to do with, since investment is still slightly below its pre-recession share of GDP, so there is not a plausible story that companies will somehow have to curtail investment due to shrinking profits. So why is AP worried that workers are getting back some of the income share they lost during the downturn.

As the piece notes, consumption was revised upward. The saving rate was reported as 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter, not much different from the 4.8 percent rate recorded in 2013, the low for recovery. The Post and other media outlets gave extensive coverage to economists explaining why consumers were being cautious and not spending their dividend from falling energy prices. The data now indicate that they were not being cautious, that they were pretty much spending it at the same rate as other income. (Well, at least it kept some economists employed.)

Seriously, that is what they said, more or less. An AP news article on the latest revision to fourth quarter GDP data told readers:

“Friday’s report also contained a potentially worrisome sign — a weak first estimate of corporate profits. It showed that pretax profits fell 7.8 percent in the fourth quarter after a 1.6 percent drop in the third quarter. Fourth quarter profits were also down 11.5 percent from a year earlier — the steepest annual drop since 30.8 percent plunge in the fourth quarter of 2008 at the depths of the financial crisis.”

It is not clear what about this drop in corporate profits is supposed to be worrisome. Corporate profits had risen at the expense of wages during the downturn. The profit share of national income is still well above its pre-recession level. Companies continue to have more profit than they know what to do with, since investment is still slightly below its pre-recession share of GDP, so there is not a plausible story that companies will somehow have to curtail investment due to shrinking profits. So why is AP worried that workers are getting back some of the income share they lost during the downturn.

As the piece notes, consumption was revised upward. The saving rate was reported as 5.0 percent in the fourth quarter, not much different from the 4.8 percent rate recorded in 2013, the low for recovery. The Post and other media outlets gave extensive coverage to economists explaining why consumers were being cautious and not spending their dividend from falling energy prices. The data now indicate that they were not being cautious, that they were pretty much spending it at the same rate as other income. (Well, at least it kept some economists employed.)

Washington Post Goes Ballistic on Trump and Tariffs

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 25, 2016

25 Marzo 2016

Everyone knows that reasonable people are supposed to hate protectionism, that is of course unless it's for doctors and lawyers, who lack the skills necessary to compete in the world economy (or drug patents). But that shouldn't mean that an ostensibly serious newspaper (I'm feeling generous today) gets to say whatever it wants to trash the policy. Today we have the spectacle of the Washington Post telling us that Donald Trump's plan to impose 45 percent tariffs on imports from China coupled with his plan to impose 35 percent tariffs on imports from Mexico would cost us 7 million jobs if the countries retaliate and 3.5 million if they don't. This is supposedly the output that Mark Zandi got, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, when he plugged these tariffs into their model. That seems more than a bit high to me. The logic of the tariffs is that they make it more expensive to import items from these countries, but the extent to which they raise prices here depends both on the extent to which we can substitute domestic production or can find other foreign sources. The latter is likely to be especially important, since many of the items produced by both countries can be readily found elsewhere. In fact an analysis by the Peterson Institute of tariffs the U.S. imposed on imports of tires from China found that the tires were almost entirely replaced by imports from other countries. For this reason, the impact on consumers from tariffs imposed on these countries is likely to be substantially limited by the availability of imports from other countries and/or our ability to produce these items domestically. But just to get a crude idea, let's assume that the price of our imports rise by half of the amount of the tariff. This is almost certainly a huge overstatement since for many imports the price rise will be just a small fraction of the size of the tariff, since there are alternative sources and even in the extreme cases the suppliers will almost certainly have to eat some of the tariff in the form of lower profit margins.

"Free Trade" Instead of "Trade": Unnecessary Verbosity in the NYT

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 24, 2016

24 Marzo 2016

Is there an editor at the NYT who insists that reporters arbitrarily throw in unneeded and inaccurate adjectives to make their articles longer? An article on President Obama’s trip to Argentina twice referred to the Free Trade Area of the Americas as a “free-trade” agreement. Most of the deal was about putting in place a common regulatory structure, not trade. It also increased some forms of protectionism in the forms of stronger and longer patents and copyright protection. The piece could have been shorter and more accurate if it had left out the word “free.”

In Addition to Concerns on Unemployment and Pollution, China is Also Running Out of People

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 24, 2016

24 Marzo 2016

That’s what readers would learn from reading this NYT piece on a Chinese scientist living in exile in Wisconsin, Yi Fuxian, who has been a critic of China’s family planning policies. According to the piece, Dr. Yi has warned that China will see a rapid decline in population which will prevent its economy from ever surpassing the United States.

It is not clear what metric Dr. Yi would be using. Presumably he means in GDP, but he is then too late for his warning. According to the I.M.F., China’s economy is already more than 10 percent larger than the U.S. economy using a purchasing power parity measure of GDP (15 percent including Hong Kong). According to its projections, China’s economy will be more than 30 percent larger by the end of the decade.

While the media like to hype the impact of rising ratios of retirees to workers as somehow devastating to the economy, arithmetic fans know that the impact of demographics is swamped by the impact of productivity growth. If this sounds complicated, 150 years ago more than half of the U.S. population was working in agriculture. Today less than one percent of the workforce is in agriculture, yet we have plenty of food. It makes sense to promote concerns about demographics if the goal is to cut back benefits for seniors, but not if the intention is to discuss economic reality.

That’s what readers would learn from reading this NYT piece on a Chinese scientist living in exile in Wisconsin, Yi Fuxian, who has been a critic of China’s family planning policies. According to the piece, Dr. Yi has warned that China will see a rapid decline in population which will prevent its economy from ever surpassing the United States.

It is not clear what metric Dr. Yi would be using. Presumably he means in GDP, but he is then too late for his warning. According to the I.M.F., China’s economy is already more than 10 percent larger than the U.S. economy using a purchasing power parity measure of GDP (15 percent including Hong Kong). According to its projections, China’s economy will be more than 30 percent larger by the end of the decade.

While the media like to hype the impact of rising ratios of retirees to workers as somehow devastating to the economy, arithmetic fans know that the impact of demographics is swamped by the impact of productivity growth. If this sounds complicated, 150 years ago more than half of the U.S. population was working in agriculture. Today less than one percent of the workforce is in agriculture, yet we have plenty of food. It makes sense to promote concerns about demographics if the goal is to cut back benefits for seniors, but not if the intention is to discuss economic reality.

Magical Thinking: Sanders, Clinton, and the Federal Reserve Board

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 23, 2016

23 Marzo 2016

Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute and a regular New York Times columnist told readers that he doesn’t have access to the Internet. This admission came in the context of a published exchange with Gail Collins, another New York Times columnist.

This fact was revealed in the context of a discussion of the Republican presidential candidates’ proposals to have large tax cuts and then make up the lost revenue from waste, fraud, and abuse. Brooks acknowledged this was ridiculous, but then commented:

“The cognitive dissonance isn’t just on the Republican side, however. Sanders proposes showering cash out of helicopters, and as far as I can tell, he is really only proposing higher taxes on the much-regretted billionaires. The truth is that middle-class taxes would have to rise under his spending scenarios.”

Actually, if Brooks had access to the Internet he would have been able to discover that Senator Sanders has actually proposed very specific tax increases on the non-billionaire population. He has proposed an increase in the payroll tax to finance his proposal for paid family leave and he also proposed an increase in the payroll tax to pay for his universal Medicare plan.

Sanders does propose to have the bulk of the revenue for his agenda come from taxing the wealthy, but he is quite explicit on this point. The wealthy have been the big gainers from economic growth over the last 35 years, so it doesn’t seem absurd on its face to envision that they should bear the bulk of the burden from any need for increased revenue.

Since this conversation expressed a concern with unrealistic proposals from the presidential candidates it is surprising that no one mentioned the Federal Reserve Board. Several candidates have suggested that they would have substantially more rapid growth and job creation. The Fed has made it quite clear that it does not want to see more rapid job creation. They have expressed concern that if the unemployment rate fell substantially below current levels that it would lead to an inflationary spiral. In order to ensure that such a spiral does not develop most members of the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) have indicated a willingness to raise interest rates to keep the unemployment rate from falling.

Given the views of FOMC members, any candidate who indicates a desire to substantially lower the unemployment rate without addressing the Fed’s plans is engaged in magical thinking. (Senator Sanders has criticized the Fed’s plans to raise interest rates.) For some reason no one in the media has chosen to write about this obvious inconsistency in the plans of the presidential candidates.

Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this to my attention.

Arthur Brooks, the President of the American Enterprise Institute and a regular New York Times columnist told readers that he doesn’t have access to the Internet. This admission came in the context of a published exchange with Gail Collins, another New York Times columnist.

This fact was revealed in the context of a discussion of the Republican presidential candidates’ proposals to have large tax cuts and then make up the lost revenue from waste, fraud, and abuse. Brooks acknowledged this was ridiculous, but then commented:

“The cognitive dissonance isn’t just on the Republican side, however. Sanders proposes showering cash out of helicopters, and as far as I can tell, he is really only proposing higher taxes on the much-regretted billionaires. The truth is that middle-class taxes would have to rise under his spending scenarios.”

Actually, if Brooks had access to the Internet he would have been able to discover that Senator Sanders has actually proposed very specific tax increases on the non-billionaire population. He has proposed an increase in the payroll tax to finance his proposal for paid family leave and he also proposed an increase in the payroll tax to pay for his universal Medicare plan.

Sanders does propose to have the bulk of the revenue for his agenda come from taxing the wealthy, but he is quite explicit on this point. The wealthy have been the big gainers from economic growth over the last 35 years, so it doesn’t seem absurd on its face to envision that they should bear the bulk of the burden from any need for increased revenue.

Since this conversation expressed a concern with unrealistic proposals from the presidential candidates it is surprising that no one mentioned the Federal Reserve Board. Several candidates have suggested that they would have substantially more rapid growth and job creation. The Fed has made it quite clear that it does not want to see more rapid job creation. They have expressed concern that if the unemployment rate fell substantially below current levels that it would lead to an inflationary spiral. In order to ensure that such a spiral does not develop most members of the Federal Reserve Board’s Open Market Committee (FOMC) have indicated a willingness to raise interest rates to keep the unemployment rate from falling.

Given the views of FOMC members, any candidate who indicates a desire to substantially lower the unemployment rate without addressing the Fed’s plans is engaged in magical thinking. (Senator Sanders has criticized the Fed’s plans to raise interest rates.) For some reason no one in the media has chosen to write about this obvious inconsistency in the plans of the presidential candidates.

Thanks to Robert Salzberg for calling this to my attention.

Michael Gerson's Fact Free Attack on Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 22, 2016

22 Marzo 2016

No one reads the Washington Post opinion page to learn about the economy. People read it to learn what the Very Serious People have to say about the world. Michael Gerson gave us the latest edition in a column attacking Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Readers learned that this was about the Very Serious People view of the world rather than economic reality in the second paragraph. "The past several decades have seen both dramatic increases in productivity and the fading of the traditional, American, middle-class dream. The globalization of labor markets (creating competition with skilled workers abroad) and new technology and automation (hollowing out whole categories of labor at home) have placed downward pressure on wages and put a relentless emphasis on acquiring new skills." Both parts of this assertion are wrong. First, the past several decades have actually been a period of relatively slow increases in productivity growth, as our good friends at the Bureau of Labor Statistics will tell anyone who visits their website. (CEPR offers free tours for Washington Post columnists and editorial writers.) In the years since 1980, when inequality first began to grow, productivity growth has averaged 1.9 percent a year. That is down from 2.5 percent annual growth in the years from 1947 when wages at the middle and bottom grew as fast or faster than those at the top. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Gerson doesn't just get the basic story of productivity growth 180 degrees backward, he also gets the story of globalization wrong. Our manufacturing workers saw their pay lowered by globalization because that was the purpose of the trade agreements we negotiated. The point was to make it as easy as possible to relocate factories in Mexico, China, and other developing countries, putting our workers in direct competition with low-paid workers who were often willing to work for less than one-tenth the wages of our workers. At the same time we left in place or even increased the barriers that protect doctors, dentists, and lawyers from having to compete with their lower paid counterparts in the developing world or even other rich countries. (Apparently our trade negotiators think that doctors and lawyers lack the skills necessary to compete in the world economy.) For example, doctors still have to complete a U.S. residency program to practice in the United States and dentists have go a U.S. dental school. (We recently starting allowing graduates of Canadian dental schools to practice here as well.)

• Globalization and TradeGlobalización y comercio

Robert Samuelson Pushes the TPP Again

By Dean BakerDean Baker

March 21, 2016

21 Marzo 2016

President Obama's allies in the media are working hard laying the groundwork for Congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Robert Samuelson did his part with a column warning that it would be "dangerous" if the next president repudiated the TPP. I suppose the piece is worth some brownie points with the administration, but it doesn't make much sense. He tells readers: "The United States has had continuous annual trade deficits since 1976, well before the North American Free Trade Agreement (1994) and China’s joining the World Trade Organization (2001). The explanation is that the dollar is widely used to settle trade transactions, to make cross-border investments and — for governments — to hold as international reserves. "The resulting dollar demand on foreign exchange markets raises the dollar’s value in relation to other currencies. This makes U.S. exports more expensive and imports into the United States cheaper." There is a big difference between the relatively modest trade deficit (@ 1 percent of GDP) the United States ran in most of the years from 1976 to 1997 and the much larger trade deficits the United States ran in the years after the East Asian financial crisis in 1997. This was when developing countries began accumulating massive amounts of reserves. As a result the deficit expanded to a peak of almost 6 percent of GDP and is now somewhat over $500 billion (@ 3 percent of GDP).