4 Comments
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Foster Roberts's avatar

You brought everything to this article—great read!

Plus: I also imagined an Inglorious Basterd Pitt saying, “Nat C’s.”

Mack BT's avatar

Absolute best economic, political and cultural analysis I have read on this since the election! Thanks!

Policy Tensor's avatar

Very sharp. Three disagreements though. (1) Klein and Pettis theory is wrong. Or at the very least dated bc wage suppression in China ended a while ago. Chinese real wage is now higher than Ukraine or Georgia! https://x.com/policytensor/status/1909032427231510958?s=46. Nor is China suppressing its currency; to the contrary. (2) the risk of a global collapse of trade is low; it’s the US that is isolating itself (https://x.com/policytensor/status/1909089669477773444?s=46). (3) comparative advantage accounts for about a sixth of the gains from trade. The big gains have to with the trade in intermediates and economies of scale. See Melitz (2003) and my https://open.substack.com/pub/policytensor/p/notes-on-us-china-policy.

Peter Angel's avatar

I hate it here. Thank you, excellent article as always