Dr. John – Goodnight Irene
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Trade Waits for No One
As China rises and the U.S. is run by a short-sighted, transactional presidency, the world is shifting and twisting like an alligator breaking into a Floridian’s kitchen. When we were in Vietnam a few weeks ago, we met with someone the U.S. government hired to examine how goods were being smuggled into China so as to avoid U.S. tariffs. Business people don’t sit idly watching leaders drunkenly move their chess pieces—they act. Meanwhile, Huawei, the controversial Chinese IT company, acted recently by buying one of Russia’s leading face recognition technology companies. As the world splits into divided Internet spheres, it would be short-sighted to believe our globe will remain static. In fact, just last week, gizmodo.com reported that “For more than two hours on Thursday, one of China’s largest internet providers forced a huge chunk of European mobile traffic to be rerouted through its own servers.” This included U.S. military traffic, data to and from companies such as Microsoft, and almost all traffic to and from France and other European countries. All of this activity, illicit and otherwise, occurs in an era when most large challenges are transnational—climate change, refugees, health (see China’s under-covered swine flu epidemic which is now an Asian epidemic) and others. Alas, our world’s short-sighted leaders have not made appointments at Warby Parker’s.
India Goes All “China” On Us
In March, we noted a new study that quantified how much China was inflating its official GDP statistics (1.7% per year from 2008 to 2016) and compared China’s revised GDP with India’s higher GDP growth rates during that same period. But what if India was also inflating its official GDP growth figures? Well, a paper published in Harvard’s Center for International Development by Arvind Subramanian, a former economic advisor to the Indian government, claims, “A change in the method used to calculate India’s GDP led to a significant overestimation of growth.” How much? The report claims instead of an average of 7% growth from 2011 to 2017, the average was actually 4.5%. This changes the chart we presented in March considerably (see below). Who else has been inflating GDP growth? And how much grade inflation is there at Harvard? We await answers.
Japan Chair Racing Grand Prix–the Greatest Grand Prix
In a week where memorials and second lines were held for two New Orleans icons—Leah Chase and Dr. John—and should have been held for Kevin Durant’s Achilles’ tendon and perhaps for democratic hopes in Hong Kong, we feel we must end on a lighter note. And so we present the Japan Office Chair Grand Prix. This is a race held in Hanyu, Japan in which “teams of three battle it out on ordinary office furniture across two grueling hours to see who can complete the most laps of the 200 meter course.” We are ashamed to admit that this race was first started in 2009 and we have yet to watch it. Or even better, we are searching for two teammates to join us in the 2020 race. Send us your credentials and applications immediately.
Office Chair Grand Prix Sees Racers Scooch, Slide and Glide
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Over the weekend we were headed to a baseball game and got stuck behind a large pick-up truck driving very slowly. As we grumbled at its lack of speed we noticed two stickers on its back window. One read “Redneck” and the other read “White Pride.” We are sure many people feel such thoughts but it appears that now that there is a president who gives loud and obnoxious voice to such emotions that people are emboldened to slap them on their vehicles for all to see their racism. It’s a bit scary. After the baseball game, we went to a comedy show (when you are a fan of the Seattle Mariners such antidotes are necessary) to see Helen Hong of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Netflix comedy fame. We short-sightedly sat in the front row and at one point Ms. Hong, who continually involved and engaged with her audience, looked at us and said we were the “whitest person she had ever seen.” It was a joke, of course–and we even laughed at the time. But, later we wondered what she meant when she said we were the “whitest.” Surely she’s seen whiter skinned people than us–she lives in Brooklyn after all. Was it the way we were dressed? She had no way of knowing our cultural tastes or ideas or inner thoughts. Of course, it was all a set up for her to tell jokes, but we wonder if her joke was a sticker on the back of her pick-up truck full of gags. But whatever our level of whiteness or any other color, we note China’s robot war, Africa’s manufacturing gains and Britain’s lack of coal. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, vowing to fight institutional racism while misjudging the content of people’s character (we are a bad judge of character) of people all over this complex, diverse world.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
The Coming Robot War in China?
The great robot phobia began approximately four years and seven months ago. Humanity is increasingly scared robots will take over, kill us and take our jobs. Two years ago we reported that automation and robots may harm developing countries by eliminating manufacturing jobs before these countries leverage these jobs to develop into mid-income countries. Now comes a study focusing on how automation and robots are affecting China. Remember China is gung-ho for AI and robots with, as the report notes, President Xi himself calling for a robot revolution to boost productivity (though no robots will be allowed to be members of the Chinese Communist Party and definitely are not allowed to be General Secretary). China is the largest user of industrial robots in the world (per capita South Korea is the largest) and recent studies have found that 77 percent of Chinese jobs are susceptible to automation. This study, by the Institute of Labor Economics, finds that increases in industrial robots in a Chinese city reduces employment in those cities, and “reduces annual wages by 7.7 percent.” The study also claims that social unrest increased dramatically in places in China where there were large increases in robots. This is probably one of the reasons for Xi’s clampdown on society–the worry over social unrest, some of which will be caused by automation. All countries are likely to face a reckoning with automation and robots—China’s may be more challenging than most.
Never Mind the Robots–African Manufacturing
Last month we told you about the great book, The Next Factory of the World, which details how Chinese investors are helping African countries become the next manufacturing hubs. Now that you’ve read the book (you have, right?), we’re here to tell you via a Noah Smith Twitter thread that the African manufacturing revolution continues (even with the threat of robots and automation) with Indian, Japanese and Korean investors playing a part. Smith points to an article describing Isuzu Motors opening a vehicle assembly plant in Ethiopia (our world’s most underrated country—please someone start an Ethiopian ETF we can invest in), as well as Hyundai opening an assembly plant. And Nissan has opened a plant in Ghana. Can Africa develop before the robots take over? Also, if a significant percentage of manufacturing shifts to Africa from Asia, what will this mean for U.S. West Coast ports? We await answers.
Bad Kids Breathe Easier in Britain
The world continues to change quickly and despite what people may tell you, some of these changes are for the better. Take the U.K. for example—it’s not all about Brexit and political upheaval. For the last two weeks, “Britain has not used coal to generate electricity—the longest period since the 1880s,” according to the BBC. Yes, Britain will still burn lots of coal this year but it is on pace to eliminate all coal usage by 2025 as it continues to bring renewable energy online and relies on natural gas and nuclear power. Below is a snapshot of Gridwatch’s real-time energy usage in the U.K. Notice the coal gauge is on zero. New technologies will continue to improve clean energy generation, in the U.K. and elsewhere. But what will Santa do in the future? Kids will be able to act as badly as they want by 2030.
When we first traveled to Vietnam nearly two decades ago, the roads were filled with bicycles and scooters. Over the years we began to see more scooters and fewer bikes. This week during our trip to Ho Chi Minh City, cars entered the great race to middle class status. Back in the day, crossing a street in Vietnam was akin to walking across hot coals, always scary, often painful, and deadly if you took a wrong step. But while it is not exactly safe nowadays to cross the street in HCMC, it is certainly safer than it used to be. Lanes seem to exist and drivers occasionally even use them. And there are often–praise be the Great Urban Planner in the Sky–crosswalks and stoplights! Crazy town. There are drawbacks to all of this, of course. The increased number of cars are adding to our world’s climate change problems. But nonetheless, there is something gratifying and hopeful to periodically visiting a country and seeing its economic progress. In a few years, we hope those cars will be powered by electricity, and the electricity generated cleanly not by coal as is currently the case. So this week we bring you three tales of our trip to Vietnam, including why it is one of the four most important countries in the world, tangible evidence the world is better than it was, and the importance of the international trade philosopher. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, offering dragon fruit and Vietnamese fresh rolls to all who will have them.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
One of the Four Most Important Countries
The notion slipped across our gaze, at first merely a bud, than blooming into a Da Lat Rose during our trip to Ho Chi Minh City last week. Vietnam is one of the four most important countries in the world. Until recently the world had grown comfortable (complacent?) in the model of an emerging country growing economically then liberalizing politically. Taiwan and South Korea, for example, each helped to set that pattern. Many of us assumed it was the new way of the world, like prestige TV or exotic flavors of ice cream. And then came China. Or rather it did not come–to liberalize. Instead, even as China’s economy grew, in recent years it has become more authoritarian. It broke the trend of economic liberalization followed by democratization. Some worry this is the new vogue of the world. That future emerging markets will remain authoritarian. And so we turn to Vietnam, and note its up and coming economy. Will it follow the post-World War II pattern and liberalize as it develops economically or follow China’s precedent and rule ever more authoritatively? How the world will look and operate in the future may hinge on the answer.
We are fond of reminding you that more people have climbed out of poverty the last 40 years than at any other time in human history. Ms. Nguyen* could be a poster child for this wonderful trend. Thirty years ago she sold fruit from a small cart on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City. Last week we met in her gorgeous home full of expensive wood carvings across the street from the main wholesale produce market for the region. One of her sons is off to study at Cambridge this fall, the other studied in Boston. She is now a major importer of fruits and vegetables, including Washington state apples, for the increasingly large Vietnamese middle class. We get that our world faces major challenges and we understand that things are not perfect, but for those who threw out the post-World War II order, and for those railing at market economies, they do so at our own peril. When the angry among us rage against that fading market-produced light, please think of Ms. Nguyen, and the hundreds of millions like her.
*Not her real name
The Trade Philospher
Since we have not asked his permission to write about him, we will not use his real name, but Mr. Linh is an archetype of a certain international trader ex-pat we have come upon over the years in our travels and work. Such a person starts out from nothing, travels to another country, founds a business and a home there by working hard and smart. Add in some good luck with that industrious intelligence and these ex-pat traders establish a good life for themselves. Our man in Vietnam, originally from Singapore, is one such example. Over much of a day meeting with, dining with and sharing a beer with Mr. Linh, we certainly learned about a segment of the Vietnamese market (the reason for our meeting), but we also learned much about Asia, politics, how people act and react and many other useful concepts and ideas. Mr. Linh is not an educated man but he is well-read, and experienced. He can delve into history and relate it to his adopted country’s situation and how the world works in general. He is a true trade philosopher. I would swap many a professional policy wonk for such a man.
We raise a new and troubling trend that we need your help to understand. We talk, of course, about waiters’ insistent desire to take our plate away before we are finished eating. This happened again to us last night. Interestingly, we were at a private club not a restaurant. We once assumed restaurants do this in an effort to turn tables more quickly and bring in more revenue. But we’re not sure what the incentive is for a private club to do this. At any rate, it has been happening more and more frequently over the last year. Food will still be on our plate, we may be engaged in conversation with our meal mates, and the waiter, often without even asking, will whisk our dish away. So why are restaurants and even private clubs doing this? Is there a plate shortage we are unaware of, perhaps a result of one of the many trade wars the United States has engaged in? Perhaps it’s just a corporate fad, making no sense, like the open office craze that swept work places for a few years. Or maybe there is something more deep and mysterious occurring, some X-Files scenario. Or perhaps it is foreign interference into American dining morés or even some secret society of wait staff engaged in a revolt against the eating masses? Whatever the cause, we aim to get to the bottom of it and stop this madness. While we await your theories, we offer a dish of the new world, an entrée of where the world’s wealth is and an unappetizing dessert of the Venezuelan diaspora. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, your maître d’ to a world of information and data.
We will be speaking in Spokane next week to the Washington Public Ports Association and then off to Vietnam for a week. INTN will return on Thursday, May 30th.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
The New World Progresses
With the abdication of leadership in the world by the U.S., the rest of the world adapts and adjusts accordingly like the Golden State Warriors without Kevin Durant. This week brings word of Japan and Vietnam forming new alliances to address China’s South China Sea ambitions. The Japan Times reports that last week Japan and Vietnam’s Defense Ministers met in Hanoi and announced the two countries “will work together to peacefully resolve the issue of China’s rapid expansion in the South China Sea.” The two countries more generally are deepening their alliance to address a host of security and policy issues. The two countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate on “maritime security, humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and cybersecurity.” We are interested in whether our new world will be safer and more peaceful than the old one. But either way, it is happening.
Where the Wealth is (Our Underrated Country)
Over the last ten years, where is wealth congregating? Or as VisualCapitalist phrases it, where are the best and worst performing wealth markets in the world, defining “wealth market” as “the total assets owned by individuals within a jurisdiction.” You will not be surprised that China tops the list but the number three country for wealth markets over the last ten years is, yes, our favorite underrated country, Ethiopia, which saw a 102 percent increase since 2008 in the size of its “wealth market.” Number 2 Mauritius is probably surprising too. India is a no-brainer for this list as is Vietnam (where we are headed in a week). The worst performing market is not surprising either—nice work Venezuela.
Venezuelan’s Destination
Speaking of Venezuela, that slow burning trash fire has led to a diaspora. Where are Venezuelans fleeing to? Check out the Council on Foreign Relations handy map below. With 1.1 million, Colombia is home to the largest group of fleeing Venezuelans, followed by Peru, the United States and Ecuador. Simon Kuestenmacher tells us that about 10 percent of Venezuela’s population has fled the country in the last three years. Venezuela was once a prosperous, stable country. We hope it will be again someday.
Truth and facts are much debated in public discourse today with various parties claiming ownership over them. We are a data person by nature–Lou Dobbs once called us an empirical bast**d in front of a crowd of hundreds, a badge we wear proudly. But it is easy to become overconfident in data so that it can obscure the truth. Nearly all data is open to interpretation, incomplete or a smaller sample size than we realize. We see national writers such as Noah Smith or even entire basketball teams such as the Houston Rockets making this mistake on occasion. Almost all theories and ideas succumb to what we call the Tyranny of Narrative. Art contributes to this but also can mitigate it. Not too long ago we said to someone that nonfiction books provide us with facts, but novels with the truth (we believe we were quoting or misquoting someone but can’t find the source). The person we were talking with looked at us like we were crazy. And maybe we are but we are nonetheless eager to see the new movie Bolden that is being released tomorrow (but not in backwater Seattle) about the near mythical New Orleans cornetist Buddy Bolden who some claim invented jazz. He did not. No one person invented anything–but The Tyranny of Narrative makes us think so. However, Bolden was probably a key evolver of music that eventually became known as jazz. And for the truth, if not the facts, we look forward to seeing the movie. And we look forward to presenting you one of the most enlightening books we’ve read in recent years, how Tokyo keeps housing affordable and the surprising reason for Japan’s low birth rate. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, blowing our horn about international data and information and trying to remember to not be too confident about it.
Bolden – Official Trailer
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Book it: Chinese Helping Africa
When discussing China’s activities in Africa, most of the attention focuses on large government influenced projects such as loans that can’t be paid back or China taking control of ports or other worrying activities. But the 2017 book The Next Factory of the World: How Chinese Investment is Reshaping Africa, focuses on the individual Chinese business people who are opening factories throughout Africa. For us it is the most enlightening book we have read since The Warmth of Other Suns. The author, Irene Yuan Sun, in the best way melds individual stories of Chinese investors and Africans she has interviewed with a broader macro data view to develop a current picture of Africa and a possible vision for its future. As she notes, these private Chinese investors are not part of the geopolitical games of the Chinese government, “They are instead driven by the economics of their individual businesses and the momentum of their own remarkable life trajectories. These are Chinese who rose from working in the early factories of China to developing their own in Africa.” Sun’s hope is just as Japan begat Taiwan which led to South Korea and China, that a variety of African countries are now poised to become the next manufacturing powerhouses with all the economic and social development that entails. Sun’s glasses are not rose-tinted. She explains the trade-offs, challenges and possible pitfalls of Chinese investment in Africa. But the book changed how I view the ascent of China and the prospects for Africa. The book notes there are now more than 10,000 Chinese firms active in Africa (mostly privately owned) each transforming the localities in which they’ve set up shop. From flip-flop factories in Nigeria, to ceramics manufacturing in Lesotho to drug capsules in Ethiopia (yes, our most underrated country plays a role in this narrative), Sun’s book, notes the “confluence of rising labor costs in China, the relocation of Chinese factory owners with valuable life experiences to Africa, and Africa’s demographics make it possible for us to imagine that Africa might very well become the next factory of the world.” Buy and read this book.
Tokyo’s Housing Affordability
As many cities wrestle with housing affordability issues, including here in Seattle, home of INTN’s worldwide headquarters, perhaps it is time for policymakers to meet Mr. Demand and Ms. Supply. They’re an ever shifting Virginia Wolfe type of couple that we all too often forget in our rush to economic Tinder and eHarmony. But Jim Gleeson of the London Housing Authority creates an instructive animation to remind us of their importance, as you can see in the two screengrabs below (click on them to see the full animation). In 1970, Tokyo, Paris, London and New York had similar housing supplies. By 2013, Tokyo nearly doubled its housing stock while the other three cities had barely increased theirs. Consequently, Tokyo housing prices have been relatively stable while in the other three cities, housing has become crazily expensive. Get building if you want less inequality and more affordability.
Baby Driver
More than once we’ve discussed Japan’s low birth rates and consequent aging demographics. But, we haven’t delved into why Japan has such low birth rates. Fortunately, college student Trevor Grayeb (the future is in good hands) has and shows that much of the reason for Japan’s low birth rate is due to the “low proportion of children born out of wedlock.” Yes, non-married Japanese are not having enough irresponsible sex. Okay, maybe that’s not his conclusion. But Grayeb shows that married Japanese actually have children at a higher rate than the OECD average. Japan’s aging demographics aren’t due to the establishment having fewer children—they actually do this better than the rest of the west—it’s due to those not married having fewer children.
We attended the Washington Council on International Trade’s annual Trade Summit earlier this week. As always, it was informative and educational and we especially appreciated and were informed by the sage Spencer Cohen and legendary David Tang’s words. In these times of transition–from a U.S.-led world, a post-World War II global architecture, an era of established civic norms–discussing the importance of international trade amongst mostly like-minded people, was a bit of a shelter from the storm. But the squall continued to rage outside the hall of the conference, and occasionally inside it. Even speakers sympathetic to trade claimed that trade had been disruptive. There are always some losers in trade but the vast, vast majority gained from open trade. Those attempting to blame trade for the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S, must grapple with the graph below–every country lost manufacturing jobs over the last forty years. Even China has fewer manufacturing jobs. This has nothing to do with international trade or any liberalization of it, otherwise the slope of manufacturing job loss would not be the same for every country. We know that introducing facts and data into the debate will not stop a single nonsensical statement or policy from presidential candidates of both parties. But we tilt at our windmill–the blades built in Japan, the generator in Pennsylvania, the base in Germany and finally assembled in China–nonetheless. And at the same time we tilt in the direction of who owns Huawei, Japan’s Obi and Road Initiative and Africa’s first high speed rail. It’s this week’s International Need to Know, turning to Sancho for comfort as we travel the rocky road of international information and data.
Without further ado, here’s what you need to know.
Who Owns Huawei?
In the storm drain of new information in today’s world, it’s hard to keep track of continuing stories of importance. Take Huawei, for instance. Remember that the company’s CFO was arrested in Canada? Her case continues through the Canadian courts and Huawei’s 5G technology contends in the court of world opinion. Through it all there has been debate about who actually owns Huawei, whether it’s a private company or actually state-owned, an important question for a company which hopes to manage information networks in countries around the world. But government control is often difficult to discern in the Chinese corporate world. A new paper by Donald Clark and Christopher Balding claims to solve this mystery. The paper states, “The Huawei operating company is 100% owned by a holding company, which is in turn approximately 1% owned by Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei and 99% owned by an entity called a “trade union committee” for the holding company.” Clark and Balding assert this holding company is really the state. “Given the public nature of trade unions in China, if the ownership stake of the trade union committee is genuine, and if the trade union and its committee function as trade unions generally function in China, then Huawei may be deemed effectively state-owned.” Huawei has ineffectively pushed back against the paper and the CIA has weighed in. We await more information on this point. [Last minute update: This morning Huawei’s Chief Secretary spoke to reporters with what he claimed was evidence showing Huawei is employee owned. Reporters did not seem to buy it.]
From Clark/Balding Paper
Japan’s Belt (Obi) and Road Initiative
As 29 countries gather in Beijing this week for a Summit on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a provocative article at warontherocks.com details Japan’s own Obi and Road initiative. It turns out that even now Japan owns far more overseas assets than China. According to the article, “At the end of 2016, Japan’s stock of foreign direct investment in major Asian economies (excluding China and Hong Kong) was nearly $260 billion, exceeding China’s $58.3 billion.” And Japan is working to increase its investments in infrastructure projects in Asia, nearly doubling its infrastructure exports since 2017. At the same time, Japan is cooperating when it can in the Belt and Road with Prime Minister Abe saying, “Under this Free and Open Indo-Pacific Strategy, we believe that we can cooperate greatly with the Belt and Road plan touted by China.” But Japan is also distinguishing itself from the Belt and Road by emphasizing “quality” and environmental concerns. Note the U.S. is nowhere in all of this. The Asia Century progresses.
Via Mike Bird, WSJ
Sub-Saharan Africa’s First Bullet Train
When we drive to Portland, Oregon from Seattle, which once we could do in less than three hours, but with increased traffic now can take anywhere from three and a half hours to six days (our math may be exaggerated), we dream of a high speed rail between the two cities. It will never happen, at least not in our lifetime, for political, regulatory and economic reasons. But you may be surprised to hear that sub-Saharan Africa’s first bullet train project is getting underway that will connect land-locked Rwanda with the port in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Each of these two countries has agreed to split the $2.5 billion costs nearly evenly. Construction was originally to have begun last year but has been delayed. Will it start soon and how overbudget will it be? If Rwanda and Tanzania pull this off, it will be a major milestone for these African nations. We will keep an eye on it while stuck in traffic–and we will soon report to you on some additional eye opening Africa progress. Stay tuned!
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