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Questions about whether the emerging market countries are looking ahead at a period of lower growth in the next decade. If the slowdown in 2013 is structural then these countries have to to make changes in economic policies that will help them return to higher rates of growth. If the slowdown is cyclical then this is temporary and emerging market countries will return to higher growth rates. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico and India need to improve infrastructure and educational systems, and invest in research and development to generate more growth. Turkey and India depend on foreign capital, which puts limits to growth, creating a need to boost domestic savings and investment for long term growth. Lower rate of about 7% compared to the 9-10% of the last decade in China are because the wave of investment in construction and infrastructure building through huge state investments is now slowing, says Peter Aslund of the Peterson Institute of International Economics. It is a positive prospect for China, according to Kalpana Kochhar, a deputy director of IMF, because of the asset bubbles developing in real estate. It is seen positively by China's new government as it tackles problems created by a rush to industrialization of widespread pollution of the environment, and lack of balanced development without attention paid to healthcare, worker wages and social security. Stephen Schwartz of BBVA bank, says urbanizaton will drive further gains, especially in India, which has lagged behind the gains made in China and is likely to follow the rapid urbanization seen in China. New elections in India in 2014 are likely to lead to more growth oriented government policies. A pause in the U.S. Federal Reserve's policy of withdrawing economic stimulus gives emerging markets, especially India, and opportunity to come up with new economic policies to restore growth....

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Drier weather is affecting wheat production in Europe, India, Brazil and other countries. This is happening as the war in Ukraine and blockade of Black sea ports such as Odessa is affecting supplies from Ukraine. A more than 5% fall in French wheat production is expected. France is the fifth largest producer of wheat after China, India, Russia, and the US. It is the 4th biggest wheat exporter. EU forecasts for wheat are for about 279 million metric tons in 2022-2023 growing season, down 4% because of dry weather. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization FAO says in its twice a year Global Food Report that global grain production including corn, wheat and other grains is expected at 2.78 billion metric tons in 2022 down almost 16 million metric tons from 2021. It is the first decline in 4 years and much of this is from the problems in Ukraine. India has banned wheat exports for food security reasons after the drier weather.  And Russian production of grains faces problems because paying for Russian grains is more complicated. ...

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iCET Initiative for Critical and Emerging Technologies is a new program that was agreed to between president Biden and prime minister Modi at the Quad Summit in May 2022. It has the focus of building the US relationship with India for advanced and emerging technologies in the competition with China, and also as a way to expand India's role in the US and EU supply chain arrangement. Its first inaugural dialogue happened this week between Jake Sullivan NSA for the US and Ajit Doval NSA for India. The goals of iCET are To seek to build supply chains which increase co-production and co-development between the countries  To increase linkages between the countries startup ecosystems To broaden defense innovation and technology cooperation To build resilient semiconductor supply chains  Space cooperation STEM talent Next generation 5G and 6G telecommunications cooperation The US will speed up approval of GE Engines making of engines in India for light combat aircraft manufactured in India. ...

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Jim Tankersley in the NYT says administration officials point out that president Biden is determined not to repeat the political and economic mistakes of the Obama era. Economists now say that these economic mistakes slowed the recovery from the 2008 financial crisis caused by faulty mortgages of banks and excessive leveraging. Obama cut back on spending on education, on relief for workers and families affected by the financial crisis of 2008, and in investing in education and other public goods. Administration officials also point to polls that show the public increasingly sides with the president on this. "The American people are absolutely right in saying that having the super wealthy and special interests pay their fair share is the right way to cut the deficit," says a communications adviser to the National Economic Council. Huge social gaps opened up in America with these economic mistakes, including the transfer of America's manufacturing base to China, an overconcentration in one country that is only now being reversed under president Biden. Jim Tankersley has covered this loss of opportunity for American workers for over a decade. ...

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Swaminathan Iyer in the Times of India looks at the Hindenburg report from another angle. It brings a sort of self-discipline at a crucial time for the Adani enterprises in coal, renewable energy, ports and logistics. By taking note of the criticisms where Adani enterprises can benefit from scaling down the level of debt it puts the company in a better situation for the future. After two decades of breakneck expansion it provides the kind of pause needed to rationalize the entire business operation and put it on a stronger basis. As Iyer points out the Adani and Ambani story in ports logistics and telecom show a delivery of results that few other companies were willing to do. It is this kind of endeavor that made it possible for China to build a large economy over two decades. This also requires companies to take stock of the situation and impose self discipline and the measure of their future success depends on how they meet situations such as these where they are being tested and weak areas that need attention become apparent. ...

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Anders Rasmusen, NATO Secretary General 2009-2014, says it is dangerous for Europe to remain a bystander in the Indo-Pacific. He says the Social Democrats and Greens in Germany, and the Nordic countries including Denmark do not support the policies of the outgoing administration of chancellor Merkel in relations with China. Rasmussen was prime minister of Denmark from 2001-2009. The current prime minister of Denmark, is the leader of the Social Democrats and won the election in 2019 to become prime minister. In the recent German election the Social Democrats were the largest party in parliament and expected to form a government with the Greens party. The situation in the world is changing rapidly in 2020-2021 the years of the coronavirus pandemic. Supply chains are being restructured. The Danish prime minister is on a 3 day visit to India. The Biden administration is committing to spending $3.5 trillion for the renewal of the American economy and for families and workers. America is committed to it role as a leader of the free world, protecting its technologies and strengthening its industries, building respect for workers and families. ...

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On the eve of 2024 elections on a scale never seen in the world from Rajasthan desert to Himalayan mountains to the sea, PM's site looks at the themes for development that have evolved into slogans and captured the imagination of India. Development For All, Development With All, is the "Sabka Vikas, Sabka Sath" slogan that has captured the imagination and vision of the young generation of Indians. For development at speed and scale to reach 2047 with the transformation of India into a modern nation with infrastructure and per capita incomes similar to the US, EU, China or Japan. 2047 is the centenary year marking 100 years of India as an independent nation. In the interview with ANI shown alongside PM Modi discusses the problems of modernization of a region of immense diversity, history, and cultures. 2047 providing a point of focus for achieving the transformation, a transformation that is being taken up with the cooperation and support of the US and the European Union that are building a new supply chain which integrates India as a major manufacturing nation . ...

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Different versions of renewal America for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, one from head of investment firm Bridgewater Associates Dave McCormick, with assets over $100 million, and Bob Casey Jr. representing working class voters and rural voters left behind in three decades of Reagan trickle down economics and lack of government support to industry, workers and farmers under prior administrations of Clinton, Bush, Obama and Trump. Both president Joe Biden and Bob Casey are from Scranton, Pennsylvania, a iron and steel town from the 19th century, and Casey lives in Scranton, close to working class families of northeastern Pennsylvania, many of them of Irish descent from earlier immigration waves in American history. Bob Casey Jr is unique as he sees America coming back in steel. Harris thinks so as she said in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon, steel is back, not just Chips and Science. Instead of outsourcing investment as the large hedge funds have done in China, and outsourcing jobs overseas, making right here in America and delivering as Biden is doing with one trillion dollars of investment.  ...

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David Uberti looks back at a time when this part of Massachusetts between Rhode Island and Cape Cod witnessed a coal power boom with the Brayton Point Plant. How this helped build the local economy with coal. It used ten thousand tons of coal and one billion gallons of water from the Taunton river every day. It shows the kind of economic transformation that is happening in China and India with coal even as the switch to renewables is happening. In Massachsetts this was followed by the switch to wind power farms in Somerset started under Biden in 2022. This has stalled under DJT and facilities remain idle all along the New York and Massachusetts coast. What it says is that to switch to renewable one has to have some coal for economic transition to communities hit by deindustrialization. That bringing back America's industrial base, ending culture wars, and getting a bipartisan understanding of the transition from workers, communities all over the country are all part of the effort to put renewable energy on a sound basis. ...

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China's slowdownand how it is affecting Asian neighbors like S. Korea and Japanfor whom China is a major export market. Demand for raw materials will be slowing and Australia a big exporter of raw materials will be affected.

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BHP Billiton was known as Broken Hill Proprietary in the 1990's. The largest Australian mining company, it was based in Melbourne and simply known as the Big Australian. It had huge losses in that period - $3 billion in 1998-1999. The turnaround at BHP Billiton comes as a remarkable turnaround for the whole mining sector. BHP made $6.5 billion in profit in the year ending June 2005. Its not just rising Chinese demand that has made this possible. Billiton has taken steps to avoid past boom bust cycles in mining by taking a conservative approach to investing in new mines that might create an oversupply in the market. The company is run buy a banker. CEO Charles Goodyear avoids taking on large risky projects and has announced plans to return $2 billion to shareholders in stock buybacks. Even with this discipline compared to the past, some mining analysts believe the boom bust cycle will occur over time. HP has $10 billion worth of projects in different stages of development. One advantage the mining companies enjoy is the concentration of mining in a few companies- BHP, Rio Tinto, Xstrata PLC. This makes it possible to price aggressively for the nickel, copper, iron ore, and other metals. A 72% price increase was negotiated with steelmakers in 2005. Another part of the transformation is the use of risk-analysis tools. BHP uses "Monte Carlo analysis" to check all potential outcomes once a range of parameters- commodity prices, currency vales, interest rate scenarios- are entered that affect financial performance of a new mine or a new investment. Goodyear came in as CFO under a new team led by Paul Anderson, a former executive of Duke Energy Corporation, after the huge losses in failed copper mining investments in the late 1990's. Even with the recent success and the careful investing discipline there is a sense that things could change quickly if rising demand slows in China and other developing countries. And in that situation this discipline may prove insufficient and the models may only be good as the assumptions and information entered....

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WSJ Board criticism of DJT Tariffs paints a picture different from what is happening at a time when the president needs support to change the rules of world trade so that there is a level playing field for everyone. First Japan and then China have begun and pursued a course that uses the international trading system set up after 1945 to their advantage resulting in the deindustrialization of the US and Europe since the 1980's. WSJ's own reporting in July shows the inflation is subdued at about 2%. The president's jawboning or moral suasion has worked so that retailers such as Walmart have actually reduced prices on basic products and all retailers including Amazon and Target have cut prices on the more expensive products where their margins are larger. One WSJ report shows Amazon increased prices on products that were made in the US, as its own form of jawboning so that Amazon would get the point. It also belittles the extraordinary effort of Bessent and Jamieson as trade negotiators in getting the deal with Japan for $550 billion. It says DJT was lucky to get the deal when it is clear that Japan is returning the US the favor the US did to Japan, as a true ally should do, aside from US defense of Asia. ...

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The BBC's Soutik Biswas takes a look at prime minister Modi as he seeks a second term in India's general election in May 2019.  Modi's first term is marked by exceptional development schemes, efforts to provide health insurance to 500 million people who cannot afford health insurance, bringing cooking gas cylinders to hundreds of millions of Indian women especially in rural areas, efforts to jumpstart building of infrastructure projects such as airports and metro subways. A new law for GST brings together the country with one tax instead of a hodge podge of state taxes for interstate commerce, something India needed for a long time but different governments failed to implement. A failed effort to fight corruption by removing from circulation large denomination currency notes reduced economic growth briefly during the first term, though it may have accelerated the shift to formal economy needed in the long run to improve tax revenues for development needs. One of the problems for the Modi government is how do you put a value on something like Swach Bharat Mission, the achievement of the goal of defecation free India in 2019 by 100% on the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, getting rural toilets up from 38% to 100%. Development had to start from the bottom up. Similarly in a country where middle men took up a lot of the transfer to poor families of government assistance- the delivery to hundreds of millions their own bank accounts.- how do you put a value on something like this, but it is essential for development from the ground up. More than missiles or other talk this has got to be the spirit of any development oriented administration in India. Ground up, big goals and rapid delivery and an apology for the difficulties that the people suffered earlier for lack of this infrastructure. For both China and India it is the same - moving quickly to make up for 100 years of colonial rule and stagnation. The Modi government has responded to rural farmer distress with support for guaranteed crop prices. As more young voters vote for the first time an important factor is how the new voters see the years ahead under either a government led by the BJP or by a patchwork of parties as the previous ruling Congress party depends on alliances with other parties with conflicting agendas or lack of rapid development agendas. The Modi government sees itself as setting the stage for the next phase of development that would change the economy through new infrastructure development and create jobs in construction and engineering, and other areas. The criticism is that not enough jobs were created in the first term. Yet bold infrastructure development targets such as transformed the Chinese economy could be the answer for job creation. The question then is who is better qualified to launch that effort based on its track record. The Congress party's main criticism is that it has to make alliances with parties that could stall development with conflicting agendas. The other is that in the the 2 years leading to the election of Mr. Modi the Congress led government of Manmohan Singh was stalled due to corruption charges, leading to a lack of decisionmaking at the highest levels, and stalled efforts for the rapid development that could deliver the kind of jobs India needs.  Young Indians would like to see growth first and foremost, only something rivalling China's transformation over 2 decades can do this. It should be kept in mind that China poured more concrete in the 21st century so far than all the concrete the United States poured in the 20th century, according to The Guardian report. The question then is who is best qualified and in a position to deliver this needed economic miracle.    ...

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Two way trade goal of $60 billion goal set for 2010 during the visit of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to China. The focus on both sides is on improving the lives of the people in their countries, where even rapid growth still leaves vast gaps in the country's development between urban and rural, coastal and remote regions in the interior, and huge challenges wherever they turn from the environmental degradation of industrialization, to health care in a capitalist economy for both countries, and worker and human rights in a capitalist economy for China, to infrastructure development in India. So the sobering tone of Wen " its not a matter of who outdoes whom" and the thrust of Manmohan Singh's "our people are united in their aspirations for a better future". See Wen's speech to the Japanese Parliament in 2007 where he referred to two temples or monasteries in China where lamps were burning continuously to promote the cooperation and peaceful development in the two countries. He strikes one as thoughtful and focussed on improving the lives of the Chinese people, but that said is part of the system of development in China which is focussed on manufacturing for export with few of the worker protections and much corruption....

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Europe responds with platitudes and vague references to "benefits for everyone" and "detrimental" without facing up to the facts. How many American cars do you see on the streets of Germany? in Berlin or Frankfurt?- or Japan? in Tokyo or Osaka?-or South Korea? in Seoul? And how long has this been going on - since the 1980's. Europe's answer to the Marshall Plan and Japan's and China's to post war American help for recovery, was to exclude American cars and other products. GM and Ford have pulled out of China and so has VW. China's plan is to flood the world with electric cars, and Japan's to flood the world with hybrids. For far too long America has relied on capitalism that has no state involvement. In this kind of competition with hidden subsidies and national planning at the core of industrial growth in Asia. The US government has to have state involvement in it's auto, steel, aluminium, and chip industries, not to create trade disturbances but to create an even playing field for all, and rebuild a middle class destroyed by unfair trading practices of Asian nations and the EU, including Canada and Mexico which are simply used as bases to ship to the US. Ford makes 80% of its cars in the USA and GM can make the investments in new plants to raise its production from 60% in the USA to 80%. South Korea's Hyundai and Kia are investing $21 billion to make in the USA. Toyota and Nissan, VW, BMW and Mercedes can do the same.   ...

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Under Mette Frederiksen immigration which reached 21,000 in 2015 was down to a little over 1000 a year. She is a strong fighter for workers and families and labor rights and yet tough on illegal immigration. She has been proven right about this as Britain and the US under Biden are seeing illegal immigration as a threat to workers and labour, are seeing the risks of distraction from illegal immigration doing a serious disservice to workers and families by making it hard to fight for workers and families on wages, cost of living and other issues.  Even with a strong record of fighting for workers and families, Frederiksen was one of the first European leaders to see the dangers of illegal immigration to society. It gave parts of the political spectrum that had no interest all along in workers and families doing well, an issue to run on that would come to cause grave harm to workers and families. This turned out to be the error of Angela Merkel a CDU leader brought up in Communist East Germany, who had no idea of the risks of her approach for open immigration. As Merkel let this chapter unfold it created fissures in Europe, with Tories and Nigel Farage taking Britain out of the EU and laying waste to its economy for 5 years till Labour's Starmer adopted a tough immigration policy and became prime minister in 2024. That danger then spread to the US in 2016 which also suffered as Republicans and Trump did the same in the US around rhetoric but without serious action on immigration till the Lankford- Biden legislation.  That bill would have closed the border with Mexico and ended immigration as an issue forever if passed into law in December 2023, as Senator Lankford says would have happened. Ending immigration as an issue forever alongside foreign wars as an issue, so that a concentrated effort could be made on improving badly damaged lives of workers and families. And on rebuilding badly damaged manufacturing in the US, rebuilding collapsing infrastructure, and competing with better education and healthcare with the large Asian countries China, Japan/ South Korea, India. ...

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The tech monopolies have operated with impunity with one overriding goal of maximizing profits for far too long. Under Theodore Roosevelt the solution was to breakup the oil monopolies of the 1890's. Fighting Tammany Hall corruption in the New York governing structure was just one of TR's achievements, he also fought for better living conditions for workers in New York, for breaking up Standard Oil's grip on the oil industry, and worked hard to rebuild the American Navy to stand up to the European Colonial Powers who impoverished India and China. America can be proud of TR,  and Joe Stilwell who fought the Japanese in China with deep understanding and concern for ordinary Chinese and their struggle against poverty, the wall of indifference of the colonial powers to their condition.

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A 35 year old Engineering professor from Texas who studies how transportation systems propagate infectious diseases and her 2 graduate students from China started and since January maintain the database of coronavirus confirmed cases and deaths. This is one of the widely used databases, also used by public health officials in the U.S. The database was started with a hunch from one of Lauren Gardner's students from China Ensheng Dong who comes from Shanxi province, north of Wuhan. A geography and mapping specialist he had studied in the U.S. since 2012, and spent many hours inputting data by hand following his classes. This WSJ report says the website was built in 1 day and was launched on January 22, when the coronavirus cases were practically nonexistent in the rest of the world and were concentrated in the Wuhan area. This report says behind the data reported in the media everyday is a complicated supply chain filled with challenges that come with data, what is reported, underreported and with what assumptions it is reported. Dr. Gardner says she is dealing with so much data on her dashboard, 4000 points of data, that its hard enough to pull all the data scraped together from different sources, its impossible for her to check the assumptions behind the data for consistency and trying to figure out facts underlying the data.  One of the ways the virus developed in the rest of the world is the surprise with which it caught western countries and then the rest of the world. As a result something that the government authorites would do such as the Centres of Disease Control is being done in a totally ad hoc manner. The U.S. government uses the University of Washington Health Metrics database, and in turn the University of Washington Health Metrics database takes some of the data from the John Hopkins database. Because a complacent population in the western countries were relying on numbers counted as cases to know how serious this epidemic was or whether there was an epidemic, the significance of data count from China assumed a signifcance far out of proportion to what it might normally be. This was because the western countries in Europe and America never encountered an epidemic of this kind in living memory, the last one forgotten from 1917 hundred years ago. Researchers in Gottingen University study in Germany conducted analysis of data in studies of cases published in Lancet Journal and found that only 6% of cases were being shown- that a much larger part of the population was infected. A researcher at Princeton University Ramanan Laxminarayan says countries tend to delay reporting until a problem becomes certain, because telling others comes with economic costs such as a rapid drop in trade and travel. Yet he says early warning systems are key to prevention. Early warning from the different publicly available data bases was not possible for many reasons. Relying on such ad hoc data was hazardous considering that as the NYT reported recently when there was the first confirmed detected case reported in New York there were already 10,000 persons estimated to be undetected. James Glanz and Benedict Carey, say in the NYT.com on May 7, that hidden outbreaks spread through U.S. cities far earlier than Americans knew, estimates show, which makes the publicly available databases giving a false sense of security, and not acting as an early warning because of the inadequacy of the resources for this task for individual researchers to handle. Not depending on  hurriedly put together databases with inadequate resources and having an independent sense of what the danger was as German chancellor Merkel described it in her first coronavirus address in March, was a better early warning signal than the databases in retrospect. And this too had come late. The reason is that the response had to be fast, very fast, and public perceptions had to be shaped quickly about the magnitude and speed of enormous proportions of the coronavirus, so that actions could be shaped quickly and executed quickly to stop it in its tracks.    ...

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Major decisions about changing the economic structure- as advocated by the DRC and the PBOC- are expected from the Third Plenum party conference in China. This may compare to the Plenums in 1978 and 1993 which led to the setup of a market economy.

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McKinnon argues that China should be very careful not to appreciate the yuan beyond the interest rate differential between the two countries, which is related to their inflation rates. If inflation comes down in the U.S. even a 3% appreciation could lead to deflation in China. See the related article by Feldstein in this group which looks at the need for U.S. to keep business investment strong and boost exports to compensate for a housing price collapse related slowdown in the US. How this will playout and how the two situations will be managed so as to create desirable outcomes and avoid risks of slowdown in both countries is uncertain.

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A study by the director of the obesity center and professor of global nutrition at the University of north Carolina at Chapel Hill states that based on data collected from 20,000 patients in China over the last 15 years obesity has increased 1.2% a year among men in that time. The study says that more than 25% of the adults in China are overweight or obese and that the number could double in the next 20 years. Its a result mainly of improving living standards which make vegetable oil affordable, and beef and dairy foods more available and affordable. A sedentary lifestyle for many Chinese plays a part as well.

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The Education Department has opened investigations into Harvard and Yale. This is part of an overall investigation of why U.S. universities have failed to disclose at least $6.5 billion in foreign funding  from countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, according to this report in the WSJ.  The Education Department described this in a document seen by the WSJ as " multibillion dollar multinational enterprises using opaque foundations, foreign campuses and other sophisticated legal structures to generate revenue." The document says these universities acted to actively solicit funds from foreign governments, companies and nationals known to be unfriendly to the U.S.

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Interesting when 53 economists were surveyed by the WSJ 51% attributed the rising fuel prices to demand from China and India, only 15% attribute it to supply constraints, and 15% attribute it to foreign exchange issues and 11% attribte it to speculation. That is that 3 times as many economists think demand from China and India is the culprit compared to supply constraints, and twice as many economists think foreign exchange speculation and central bank issues are the cause than supply constraints. Why? Once you remove this outsize demand from China and moderate the growth there then the supply constraint does not become so critical. In previous years declining prices made exploration less attractive or the fact that price was not stable going up and then coming down making it difficult to invest based on a stable return. Now the basic component of additional energy for countries like India and China's people increasing demands could be accomodated within existing and new supplies coming onstream, without the red hot demand component of growth rates at above 10% and close to 10% in India and China exacerbating prices upto some current estimates of $200 per barrel. In effect the price spikes would reverse the demand growth, and the essential needs of more people needing everything from electricity and fuel and gasoline to improve living standards in China and India at a moderate pace would prevent oil prices from falling to levels that make aggressive search for new oil finds and increased production from more difficult locations unattractive. This would correct the previous imbalance where exploration at low prices near $30 or $40 a barrel and uncertain price levels made for little new exploration while consumers were on a consumption binge in the use of gasoline which created this present situation. And in future oil at sustainable price levels would make it easier to meet the needs of poorer people in countries like China and India as more aggressive growth resumes at some future date after this expected worldwide slowdown. So correcting the previous and current imbalances helps to create a better situation in the future to better meet the hopes and expectations of millions of people in the developing countries for better nutrition, better electricity supplies and other needs of modern living....

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The anti-corruption bill for creation of a Lokpal agency passed the lower and upper house of the Indian parliament in December 2013. It was stalled for two years after the efforts of political activist Anna Hazare's protest movement for passage of the bill. With national elections approaching in 2014 and the ruling Congress party's image bruised badly in state elections of Dec. 2013, party leaders decided to support the bill. In the elections in the capital Delhi a anti-corruption party, Aaam Aadmi (for the common man), created only recently, won a major part of the seats. In India corruption hurts not only at the national and local level as in China, but affects the daily life of the common man as bribes are required from ordinary people for anything to get done that requires approval from the huge government bureaucracy. In that sense it takes a toll on economic development and affects the quality of services received by the vast majority of people, which is why the party calls itself "common man."...