Posted on 04/16/2023 8:07:40 PM PDT by FarCenter
NEW YORK – China’s exports jumped 23% from the year-earlier month, breaking a five-month series of declines, China’s Customs Administration reported on April 13. Shipments to China’s neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) led growth with a 34% year-on-year gain, reaching a new monthly record of US$54 billion seasonally adjusted.
China’s leadership in digital infrastructure is an import driver of the export boom in developing Asia, we reported earlier this year (“Digital infrastructure propels new SE Asian Tigers,” February 5, 2023).
Exports to India rose in lockstep with shipments to Southeast Asia, reflecting China’s growing presence in Asian supply chains. Often cited as a “friend-shoring” alternative to China, India’s factories depend on Chinese components and capital goods, and its telecom companies overwhelmingly use Chinese equipment.
American efforts to shift production out of China prompt friend-shoring countries to import manufacturing inputs from China, Asia Times showed in a recent study (“The Great Re-Shoring Charade, April 6, 2023).
Except for Vietnam, which fell from an exceptionally large gain in February, all the major Southeast Asian economies showed jumps in imports from China during March. A standout is Malaysia, whose president Anwar Ibrahim recently visited Beijing.
Outside Asia, exports to Brazil registered 17% year-on-year growth in March. China’s shipments to the largest Latin American country have doubled in the past three years, in line with exports to Asia. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, known as Lulu, is in China for a state visit this week.
It’s the usual Dave Goldman China-Russia boosterism. It takes time to move things out. In that interval, Chinese exports to the region will rise as components are assembled in those other countries instead of being assembled in China and directly exported from there. In time, components will be built and assembled outside of China. At that time, exports from China will crash. In many ways, this is similar to the pattern for Russia exports. First the boom, then the extended bust.
Agreed, and if the Dollar does lose its reserve currency status, we will see manufacturing return to the US at an amazing rate. China can’t have it both ways: it cannot become a world player and keep the Yuan pegged to the Dollar. The Yuan will eventually float, and when that happens, Chinese goods will become really expensive here.
In order for the manufacturing to return the tectonic social changes are needed, like to establish the whole new class of proletariat, willing to work long hours for food.
I think a bigger problem is whether we can get the upcoming generation of workers to stop staring at their genitals and inventing new pronouns long enough to do anything productive.
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Agreed that such will happen first … it’s part of the “make it yourself or do without”. I know: I grew up that way.
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