【财富11.21】罗姆尼说中国在作弊

lilyma06

Romney Says China Is Cheating                                                                                                                          http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2011/11/21/romney-says-china-is-cheating/
                                                                                                                                                            

China is cheating, says U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The quickest way to win is to cheat, and China is playing with loaded dice.
Presidential candidate Mitt Romney “blame China” stance might make him sound like a populist protector of local jobs, but it is also more likely to be misplaced.
Fareed Zakaria pointed out on his CNN site a comment Romney made recently that basically says China stole U.S. jobs, and its weak currency policy is to blame.  “China is on almost every dimension cheating. We got to recognize that.  They’re manipulating their currency and by doing so they’re holding down  the price of Chinese goods and making sure their products are  artificially low-priced. It’s predatory pricing. It’s killing jobs in  America,” Romney said.
China is far from perfect. It has a strained relationship with India over border disputes. It’s age-old Kung Fu-Karate fight with Japan persists. Taiwan is a sticking point. Southeast Asia watches it warily.  Far across the Pacific, Washington blames it for everything from a loss of manufacturing jobs to its trade deficit.
Yet, over the last 11 years, China’s local currency, the renmimbi (RMB) has risen by about 30% to the dollar. In 2005, the RMB was worth over 8 to the dollar. Now it is worth 6.3 RMB to the dollar. The currency does not free-float like most other major currencies left to the whims of the market. The Central Bank of China decides what the RMB is worth, even though some in Washington would prefer to decide it for them.
Meanwhile, as the RMB appreciates, so does the U.S. trade deficit with China.  The deficit stood at a record $217.3 billion year-to-date ending September 30, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade division.  Last year’s deficit was a record breaking $273 billion, beating the 2008 record of $268 billion.  A stronger RMB has had no measurable impact on the U.S.-China trade balance.
The economic case for  further appreciation is flimsy, says John Wong, fund manager at Oberweis Asset Management in Hong Kong.
“That trade figure is not entirely accurate. The U.S. counts iPhone imports from China as part of the deficit just because it is assembled in China and shipped from China, but it was made in Taiwan and in the U.S. and elsewhere. China is a very small portion of that,” he says. “The RMB appreciation has had no meaningful impact on trade. Plus, as the currency appreciates, it just makes importing Chinese goods that much more expensive.”
Which brings up another point, often made by the U.S.-China Business Council, a lobby of U.S. multinationals exporting from China. If China gets too expensive for manufacturing, those jobs aren’t necessarily coming back to North Carolina. Those jobs may just as well go to India, where per capita incomes are about three times less than China’s…and they speak English. But manufacturing of lower end goods could also go to Vietnam or Bangladesh. Meanwhile, China is moving up market, and making more expensive, value-added goods that compete directly with European and U.S. made products.
While labor costs for many sectors remain well below western levels, prices for high end manufactured goods already equal or exceed those in the U.S.
Moreover, while China’s low cost labor most definitely eroded the U.S. blue collar job market in the 80s and 90s, the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico has also done its fair share. These are not policies made in Beijing that eroded blue collar labor, but policies made right in Washington, but both Republicans and Democrats.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal this weekend, World Bank chief Robert Zoellick said that U.S. politicians attacking China for its forex policy is going to go nowhere. He said the country should stop blaming China for its problems.
“We’re starting to work with the Chinese now on the possibility of some of the low-value-added manufacturing moving to third countries, including in sub-Saharan Africa,” Zoellick said, providing fodder for the USBC’s argument on where low cost labor will move once it moves out of China. It’s unlikely coming back to Ohio. “That’s probably going to be more fruitful, even though it may not be as satisfying for somebody as clubbing people. But do you want to know the real thing a country has to do? Quit blaming others; clean up your own act. The U.S. needs to fix some things at home,” Zoellick said.
Of course, no elected official with a microphone is going to say that.
The main purpose of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to China in August was to put public pressure on Beijing to strengthen the renmimbi and back door talks on trade not conducive to sound bytes.
The U.S. has been pressuring Beijing on the forex rate since 2003, even when both economies were booming and many Americans were buying Hummers and second homes in Vegas with no money down.
China’s growing trade surplus with the U.S. reflects a reorganization of the production network in Asia. China specializes
in final processing and assembly for Asian exports. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority did a study years ago that has proven correct to this day: RMB appreciation contributes little to correcting the U.S. trade deficit. Moreover, techical simulations of the effects of a one-off appreciation of the renminbi on non-China Asian exports suggest that the net gain in non-China Asian exports, if any, from a renminibi appreciation would also be small.
Maybe China should blame India? Or robots? In fact, China lost 16 million manufacturing jobs, a decline of 15%, between 1995 and 2002, according to a study of manufacturing jobs in the 20 largest economies by Joe Carson, director of economic research at Alliance Capital Management. Guess what happened in the U.S. during that same period? Did those jobs all get repatriated to low income states south of the Mason-Dixon line? Romney might think so. But in that same period, U.S. factory employment fell by 2 million, or 11%.
A stronger renmimbi is probably good for China, but not for the reasons U.S. presidential candidates cite. Accelerating the RMB’s appreciation is considered a reasonable counter-measure to another round of U.S. monetary stimulus, like a QE3. The Chinese government has been controlling the appreciation of RMB as it still remains one of the primary weapons to fight inflationary pressures. High inflation is a serious issue for the government due to concerns that rapid inflation could produce general unrest and political instability.
                                            

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