|
全球經貿之三分天下 – Jason Ma
|
瀏覽283 ｜回應2｜推薦1 |
|
|
|
The world could get carved up into these 3 blocs as Trump tariffs fuel deglobalization. Here’s which side each country might join
Jason Ma, 07/05/25
Wells Fargo sketched out a hypothetical scenario where the world is divided into three trading blocs led by the U.S., China, and the EU. (Getty Images) 請至原網頁觀看地圖
* The era of lower trade barriers and greater economic interdependence is waning, and President Donald Trump’s aggressive trade war is further stoking that trend. Economists at Wells Fargo recently sketched out a hypothetical scenario where the world is divided into three trading blocs led by the U.S., China, and the EU.
Globalization began retreating before President Donald Trump shocked the world with his aggressive trade war earlier this year.
But his tariffs accelerated the trend, prompting allies to question the U.S. role in the world with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen even declaring in April that, “The West as we knew it no longer exists.”
While Trump pulled back from his highest rates, tariffs in some form don’t look like they are going away anytime soon. On Thursday, he suggested the U.S. will unilaterally impose tariffs as high as 70% in the coming days.
In a note last month, economists at Wells Fargo sketched out a hypothetical scenario where the world is divided into three trading blocs led by the U.S., China, and the EU.
The U.S. bloc includes most of the Western Hemisphere plus traditional allies in Asia and the Middle East. China’s bloc includes Russia, much of East Asia and Central Asia, the top economies in Africa, as well as a few countries in Latin America and the Mideast. The EU bloc is the smallest group, encompassing the European Union, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Turkey and Ukraine.
“Deglobalization has had its roots in the geopolitical and economic competition between the United States and China,” Wells Fargo said. “Recent events raise the possibility of further cleaving of the global economic order. Specifically, the possibility that the European Union goes in its own geopolitical and economic direction is no longer unfathomable.”
Economic impacts of deglobalization
Wells Fargo assumes legal challenges to Trump’s tariffs will eventually fail, with the effective rate settling at around 14%. While that’s well below some of the steepest rates Trump unveiled on “Liberation Day,” it still marks a sharp increase from the 2.3% effective rate at the end of 2024.
For its analysis, the bank looked at 100 countries that account for 97% of global GDP and 93% of global exports, then split them into the three blocs.
The U.S. bloc had about half of global GDP in 2023, while the EU and China blocs each represented roughly a quarter of global GDP.
In a tripolar world where each bloc imposes a 15% across-the-board tariff on the other blocs, Wells Fargo used the Oxford Global Economic Model to estimate global real GDP would grow 9.1% between 2025 and 2029, instead of the 11% rate under a baseline scenario where trade is essentially free.
That translates to the world missing out on about $3.8 trillion in GDP during that span, or roughly $1,800 for a typical household of four.
“The growth-reducing effects of the levies are felt in the first two years after imposition, but the level of global GDP never returns to baseline, at least not during the forecast period we consider,” Wells Fargo said.
U.S. bloc
* United States
* Japan
* India
* Brazil
* Canada
* South Korea
* Mexico
* Australia
* Saudi Arabia
* Argentina
* Bahrain
* Bangladesh
* Chile
* Colombia
* Costa Rica
* Dominican Republic
* Ecuador
* Egypt
* El Salvador
* Gautemala
* Honduras
* Israel
* Jamaica
* Jordan
* Kuwait
* Morocco
* New Zealand
* Panama
* Paraguay
* Peru
* Philippines
* Qatar
* Singapore
* United Arab Emirates
* Uruguay
EU bloc
* European Union
* United Kingdom
* Iceland
* Norway
* Switzerland
* Turkey
* Ukraine
China bloc
* China
* Russia
* Indonesia
* Thailand
* Vietnam
* Malaysia
* Afghanistan
* Algeria
* Armenia
* Azerbaijan
* Belarus
* Bolivia
* Cambodia
* Iran
* Kazakhstan
* Kenya
* Kyrgyzstan
* Nicaragua
* Nigeria
* Oman
* Pakistan
* South Africa
* Sri Lanka
* Syria
* Tajikistan
* Tanzania
* Tunisia
* Turkmenistan
* Uganda
* Uzbekistar
* Venezuela
* Zimbabwe
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
美國財政「漸破產」前景堪憂 - Eleanor Pringle
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
此處「漸破產」的「用法」源於「漸凍症」的詞型。
America is ‘going broke slowly’ says J.P. Morgan, as national debt balloons and tariff revenue looks shaky
Eleanor Pringle, 10/14/25
* J.P. Morgan’s David Kelly warned this week that while America is “going broke” it’s doing so slowly enough that markets aren’t panicking yet. With U.S. national debt now topping $37.8 trillion and interest payments exceeding $1.2 trillion, Kelly said the debt-to-GDP ratio—already at 99.9%—will likely keep rising even under moderate growth. Despite tariff revenues and temporary deficit relief, he cautioned that political choices or a slowdown could quickly worsen the fiscal picture, urging investors to diversify away from U.S. assets before “going broke slowly” turns fast.
America is going broke, J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s chief global strategist, David Kelly, wrote in a note this week, but no one is panicking yet because the government is going broke slowly.
Kelly outlined that while the economy is facing a barrage of issues (geopolitics, trade wars, changing immigration enforcement, and government shutdowns to name a few) one of the key longer-term issues is how the U.S. government is going to pay its bills.
In a bid to wrangle down U.S. federal debt—and its contributions to the wider national debt—President Trump initially asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk to form the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) with the goal of axing $2 trillion from the federal budget.
But the pair then famously fell out over the White House’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated will add another $3.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. The White House countered its tariff regime will offset the spending and any decrease in revenues owing to tax cuts. The CBO estimates that tariffs should reduce total deficits by $4 trillion by 2035.
America’s national debt is spiraling higher by the second. At the time of writing it sits at over $37.8 trillion, and there are $1.2 trillion in interest payments to service the borrowing. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon and Fed chairman Jerome Powell have both expressed concerns about it.
Kelly’s point is that while investors are mindful of the basic math, the problem is going to unfold over a long period of time.
“The question I am asked most frequently by investors and financial advisors is, ‘When is the federal debt going to blow up in all of our faces?’ My usual answer is that, while we are going broke, we are going broke slowly. Global bond markets are very well aware of the trajectory of U.S. debt. The fact that even today, the U.S. government can borrow money for 30 years at a yield of just 4.6% speaks to a conviction that there remains room for the government to borrow more,” Kelly wrote in a note yesterday.
Optimism or naivete?
The economist wrote that in the near term casual speculators may have some reason for optimism. For example, he pointed to tariff revenues raking in significant sums ($31 billion in August, according to the White House) and recent estimates from the CBO and the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget that deficits for fiscal year 2025 will total 6% of GDP, down from 6.3% last year.
This reduction in borrowing as a percentage of economic growth is a key factor watched by America’s lenders. A nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio is a clear barometer of whether it will be able to repay its debts or pay higher interest rates to sell its borrowing.
But Kelly cautioned: “It’s worth pausing here to consider this number. The total federal debt in the hands of the public is now almost $30.3 trillion or, we estimate, 99.9% of GDP. Starting from these levels, if nominal GDP grows by roughly 4.5% going forward, (comprised of 2.0% real growth and 2.5% inflation), then any budget deficit north of 4.5% will cause the debt-to-GDP ratio to rise. Under our assumptions, the debt-to-GDP ratio climbs from 99.9% on September 30th, 2025, to 102.2% of GDP 12 months later.”
Debt is likely to rise even quicker than this, he added.
On tariffs, for example, there are still questions about the legalities of Trump’s action. If they are overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, “this would, at a minimum, force the administration to go back to the drawing board to impose replacement tariffs under some other authority or by sending a bill through Congress. Moreover, it could force substantial refunds of tariffs already paid in recent months,” Kelly added.
Moreover, these estimates are reliant on “no recession and no need for other major spending on domestic or international priorities.” Questions about whether the U.S. may already technically be in a recession in some states are growing. Kelly adds: “Because of all of this, a deficit equal to 6.7% of GDP should probably be regarded as a low-ball estimate of this year’s red ink.”
The takeaway for investors is diversifying their portfolios in case America’s debt begins to spiral more quickly than the current environment, Kelly said: “There is a danger that political choices lead to a faster deterioration in the federal finances, leading to a backup in long-term interest rates and a lower dollar. Based on current allocations and valuations alone, many investors should likely consider diversifying their portfolios by adding alternative assets and international stocks. The risk that we move from going broke slowly to going broke quickly adds an important reason to make this move today.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
本文於 修改第 2 次
|
|
從稀土金屬分析中國全球經濟攻略 -- Hans van Leeuwen
|
|
|
推薦1 |
|
|
|
China has the world in a $1tn choke hold
Experts fear Beijing’s economic arsenal leaves its international partners at risk of coercion
Hans van Leeuwen, 10/15/25
The world’s investors, executives, policymakers and politicians all now keep an eye on the Truth Social account @realDonaldTrump. The president’s posts have the power to move markets and even shake up the world order.
Now there’s another habit they might need to cultivate: watching the announcements from China’s ministry of commerce.
The ministry’s initially low-key announcement last week of new regulations on Chinese rare earth exports has sent shock waves through the West.
Beijing awarded itself the power to dictate what many companies, based anywhere in the world, do with key products that contain rare earths or battery materials sourced from China. The sweeping powers affect everything from cars to solar panels and missiles. And almost all companies affected have nowhere else to go.
“This is a completely new dawn. This no longer has anything to do with trade. We’ve morphed from a trade war into a grey-zone operation,” says James Kynge, a China watcher at think tank Chatham House.
“It’s a complete step change in China’s leverage and China’s ability to coerce not only the US, but every other country in the West, if it chooses to do so. The evidence of the past suggests that Beijing may well use this leverage. And then we’re into a whole different world.”
For years, Beijing has been building up an arsenal of economic weaponry. Chinese goods could be either withheld from a country or dumped on it. Exports to China could be blocked. The world’s largest creditor could toy with an indebted government’s bond market, or call in its loans.
From time to time, it has turned this coercive firepower on countries that it views as transgressive. Countries including Japan, Norway, Lithuania and Australia have already been put through the vice.
Now, it is showing the world just how far it is prepared to go.
The new rare earth powers have been announced amid claims that Britain dropped a trial against two alleged Chinese spies because of its dependence on Beijing for cash.
The case against two Britons collapsed after the Government failed to brand China a national security threat explicitly. The spooks have also reportedly been kept away from a decision on whether Beijing can build a new super-embassy in London.
In the US, Trump’s response has veered between pugnacious and placatory. After the rare earths decision, he vowed massive tariffs, only to back-pedal two days later. On Tuesday, he was back on the war path: China’s quiet boycott of US soybeans was “an economically hostile act” that would require “retribution”, he told his Truth Social followers.
Beijing has described its latest rare earths measure as retaliatory, not escalatory.
“China has said in as many words that it has modelled its own approach on what the US has been doing,” says Nigel Inkster, a former deputy MI6 chief now at Enodo Economics.
China’s use of economic weaponry
But Xi has spent his entire presidency building towards this moment. Economic weapons have always been part of his arsenal.
The most obvious is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a $1.3tn (£970bn) scheme of loans, grants and investments used to fund infrastructure projects in 150 countries worldwide.
The programme creates openings for Chinese investments and contracts for its companies. It locks economies into Chinese trade and freight corridors. It buys influence over governments.
The first half of this year was the BRI’s biggest yet: $66bn of construction contracts were awarded and $57bn of investments made, according to a report from Australia’s Griffith University and China’s Green Finance and Development Centre. There were record outlays on energy, metals and mining and technology.
The BRI has helped China become the world’s largest lender to developing countries. Its total now exceeds the combined lending of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Paris Club of 22 major creditor countries.
When the projects are debt-funded, Chinese lenders often demand key assets as collateral.
“If you’re in hock to China for billions and billions of US dollars, then you’ve got to be nice to China,” says Kynge. “I wouldn’t quite call it coercion. I call it leverage, but it could turn into coercion.”
The Stimson Centre has suggested that the BRI may have helped steer some developing countries away from recognising Taiwan diplomatically.
Although recipient countries benefit from the infrastructure, the BRI investment can go awry.
In Sri Lanka, a Chinese company took control of the Hambantota port in 2017 under a 99-year lease after the government in Colombo was unable to repay the debt.
In Ethiopia, a railway to the Port of Djibouti fell short of both the coast and Ethiopia’s industrial parks. The BRI had also saddled Ethiopia with debt, concentrated among Chinese creditors. According to a report published by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council, “positive spillovers from investment and lending from China have been limited”.
The second weapon in Xi’s arsenal is the monopolies China has built up in supply chains for goods the world cannot do without. The country’s mines churn out 61pc of the world’s rare earths, and its refiners and manufacturers process 92pc of the world’s supply.
China also holds dominant positions in the manufacture of batteries, solar panels and wind turbines, giving it the power to control prices, profitability and market access worldwide.
Many of the major producers are state-owned, state-controlled, or at the whim of state direction – meaning Beijing can use them as a lever of coercion.
“It’s not just China’s readiness to withhold access to things, it’s also the other side of the coin: China can flood international markets with highly subsidised products like electric vehicles and solar panels. For Europe, this is a particular cause for concern,” Inkster says.
Beijing exercises this control behind the fig leaf of bureaucratic procedures. The rare earth “ban” in April was actually just a new licensing process. Similarly, import bans – such as those on Australian wine, barley and lobsters in 2020 – were framed as anti-dumping or sanitary measures.
“China disguises such actions as technical trade disputes, but the intent is political and the outcome is coercive,” said John Coyne, from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
Now, China is deploying this weapon even more blatantly. Recently, it has simply stopped buying American soybeans, sorghum and beef.
The boycott is a significant blow to American farmers. China bought $12.6bn of US soybeans last year but has not purchased any since May. Trump has noticed: on Tuesday, he threatened to retaliate by terminating US imports of Chinese cooking oil.
Beijing is increasingly complementing this leverage with its third weapon: strategic investments, which reward friendly countries like Hungary and Spain, while freezing out the miscreants.
In the past two years, Spain welcomed a €1bn battery gigafactory investment, and two EV ventures worth a combined €1.7bn. When the EU was readying tariffs on Chinese-made EVs last year, the pushback came from Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Britain and the EU have stepped up their security screening of Chinese investments, and the country has been ejected from nuclear and steel projects in the UK.
But Labour has lately sounded more emollient. “China, because of its emerging economic status, isn’t just unignorable, it is also desirable to engage with,” Peter Kyle, the Business Secretary, said recently during a trip to Beijing.
Kynge wonders when, or whether, London and the European capitals will get serious about building resilience to China’s leverage. He reckons Beijing’s latest rare earth clampdown could be “a catalyst, finally, to goad the EU and the UK into action”.
“If we do actually do something, then maybe in several years, when we’ve built up some kind of a resilient supply chain for rare earths, people will look back at this moment and say China overplayed its hand,” he says.
Building up alternative supplies of rare earths will be a costly and lengthy task. In the meantime, Inkster has another suggestion: don’t be cowed. He counsels Britain and its allies to stiffen their spines, starting with the espionage prosecution.
“I honestly doubt that prosecuting this case would have a significant impact on China’s readiness to trade or invest. And even if it did, I think it would be temporary and reversible,” he says.
“At a time when the Chinese economy is still going through a pretty rough patch, they’re unlikely to want to cut off their noses just to spite their face.”
But with the world’s second-largest economy flexing its ever-growing muscles, and Trump’s America less squarely at Britain’s back, the former spook’s advice may go unheeded.
Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
本文於 修改第 1 次
|
|
|
本城市首頁
看回應文章
等級：8
