Inflation Confidence
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Inflation Confidence

MSQ Capital’s Managing Director Paul Miron explores the world’s hottest and most controversial topic.

By Paul Miron
Tue, Jun 1, 2021 10:31amGrey Clock 3 min

OPINION

The Government — particularly Josh Frydenberg — is breathing a sigh of relief as the most recent positive economic data demonstrates a strong Australian economy. 

Inflation is now both locally and internationally the hottest and most controversial economic topic for the year. Put simply, it’s because the entire global economic recovery hinges on the ability of central banks to keep interest rates low for an extended period in order to give the global economy the push it needs towards a full recovery. 

The most recent Australian inflation figures have come in lower than anticipated at 1.1% per annum. This re-affirms the RBA’s carefully articulated argument about maintaining low interest rates until the economy reaches a level of full employment. Unemployment is now down to 5.6%, consumer spending is racing back to pre-Covid-19 levels, and trade figures are strong due to high iron ore prices — all of which contributed to a $30b windfall in the current budget figures.

It seems the ‘Achilles’ heel’ to all this good news is inflation uncertainty.

The topic of inflation has not been part of our vocabulary since the era when Paul Keating was treasurer in the 1980s and Australia experienced “the recession we had to have”. 

An analogy that best describes the importance of inflation is that like watering a plant, both too little or too much water may kill it. And so it is the right balance of low constant inflation increases business profits over the long term — increasing business productivity. Such strategy helps to reduce unemployment, increases tax revenue and naturally erodes the real value of debt. 

Too much inflation can have the opposite impact. The most powerful tool left to control high levels of inflation is the RBA’s use of contractionary monetary policy (increasing interest rates). However, this is not without risk — done prematurely, it will have a negative price impact on assets such as shares and property, further stunting economic growth and possibly spiralling the economy into a recession. 

Governments and central banks will need to put on a brave face and maintain confidence in their ability to steer the global economies through these tricky times. A loss of confidence from consumers and businesses is enough of a catalyst for a self-fulfilling prophecy for inflation issues to emerge unfavourably.

This is, in itself, a very thought-provoking concept as inflation is not purely driven by economic data and activity. It is also driven by the future expectation of businesses and workers, which drive businesses to make decisions such as increasing prices on goods and services and employees hitting up bosses for a pay rise.

Covid-19 has completely skewed economic data

Worth contemplating when attempting to interpret economic data is the “base effect”. Covid-19 forced the economy to a complete standstill, with all the major economic indicators falling off a cliff. Once the economy has been rebooted from a virtual standstill, the economic indicators are all being overly exacerbated during the economic recovery. As an example, we have had two quarters of GDP growth at 3%, however, our economy is still nowhere near the same levels as it was pre-Covid-19 despite the data implying otherwise. 

Be prepared that the next inflation figure will be an absolute whopper, as it will reflect people returning to work and spending money on normal items such as childcare, entertainment and transport.

Paul Miron has more than 20 years experience in banking and commercial finance. After rising to senior positions for various Big Four banks, he started his own financial services business in 2004.

msqcapital.com



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Growth in size of U.S. market gives him extra leverage in trade negotiations with other countries

By JOSH MITCHELL
Thu, Nov 14, 2024 3 min

Donald Trump will retake office in a global economy substantially transformed from eight years ago—one much more reliant on the U.S.

It means that the president-elect’s plans, including across the board tariffs, could pack an even greater wallop on other countries than the first round of “America First” economic policy. It also gives Trump much more leverage in negotiations over trade policy.

Strong growth since the pandemic has expanded the U.S.’s weight in the global economy. Its share of output among the Group of Seven wealthy nations is higher than at any point since at least the 1980s, International Monetary Fund data shows.

Growth in China, the world’s second-largest economy, has slowed. Germany, the largest European economy, is contracting. Many poorer economies are buckling under the weight of high debt.

U.S. gains in global output partly reflect the strong dollar, which pushes up the value of American output relative to that of foreign economies. But they also result from substantial increases in U.S. productivity compared with the rest of the world.

The changes in the global economy have made America, not China, the premier destination for foreign direct investment, enlarging the exposure that foreign companies have to the U.S. economy and changes in government policy. A booming U.S. stock market has attracted huge flows of investment dollars.

“The fact that much of the rest of the world is now struggling to generate demand on its own provides more reason for countries to try to reach some sort of accommodation with Trump,” said Brad Setser , a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trump started imposing tariffs in 2018, primarily on China but also on Europe and other allies. Those tariffs fractured global trade, weighing on large exporting economies in Asia and Europe, while not obviously hurting the U.S., which is less reliant on foreign demand than its trading partners. Trump campaigned on a promise to impose at least a 60% tariff on China, and an across the board tariff of 10% to 20% on everywhere else.

America’s superior economic performance has been driven in part by energy independence and massive government spending, said Neil Shearing , chief economist at Capital Economics in London. Since the U.S. now exports more energy than it imports—including millions of barrels of oil each month to China—the nation as a whole benefits when energy prices rise, unlike for net importers such as China and Europe.

The upshot: America’s traditional role as the centre of gravity in the global economy has become even more pronounced in the years after Trump’s first-term tariffs, the pandemic, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

U.S. influence over Europe’s economy is a case in point. The U.S. has cemented its position as Europe’s largest export market as trans-Atlantic trade surged in recent years and China’s imports from Europe stalled. The U.S. has replaced Russia as Europe’s major source of imported energy. Europe runs big trade surpluses with the U.S. but big trade deficits with China.

The result is access to the U.S. market is far more important for Europe than access to European markets for the U.S. That asymmetry will give Trump leverage in trade negotiations with Europe, according to economists.

Germany exports around 7% of its entire manufacturing value-added to the U.S., but Germany imports only around 0.8% of value-added in U.S. manufacturing, according to a September paper by researchers at Germany’s Ifo Institute for Economic Research.

“German business is vulnerable to Trump,” said Marcel Fratzscher , president of the Berlin-based economic research institute DIW Berlin.

Parts of Asia have benefited from the changes in supply chains sparked by Trump’s initial trade war with China. Many manufacturers, including Chinese ones, moved factories to places such as Vietnam and Cambodia. For the past two quarters, Southeast Asia’s exports to the U.S. have exceeded those to China.

But that now leaves them more exposed to across the board tariffs, a policy that Trump advisers say will be necessary to force manufacturing back to the U.S.

To be sure, Trump’s policies could create countervailing forces. Tariffs would decrease imports and potentially weigh on productivity, but tax cuts would drive up household and business spending, including, inevitably, on imports. Other countries could retaliate by placing tariffs on U.S. goods.

Meanwhile, a tight U.S. labor market has pushed up wages, which is good for those workers. But it could pressure employers to raise prices, in turn making them vulnerable to foreign competition.

Many economists are girding for a different type of trade war from Trump 1.0, when trade fell between the U.S. and China but was diverted elsewhere.

“As long as protectionism refers only to one country, China, the world can live with this,” said Joerg Kraemer , chief economist at Commerzbank. “The thing becomes difficult or dangerous if you implement tariffs on all countries. This would be a new era in global trade.”