This should be a very interesting and promising development-Asia has surpassed the EU as the biggest US export market!
As reported by the Wall Street Journal Blog, (all bold highlights mine)
``Yet John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Investor Service, points out an interesting nugget within the March trade figures, released on Wednesday by the Commerce Department, in a note to clients today. March was “a watershed month,” he says, as “For the first time in recorded history, the moving 12-month sum of $227.6 billion of U.S. merchandise exports to Asia’s emerging market countries surpassed the… $223.7 billion of such exports to the European Union.”
``In the year through March, he notes, U.S. merchandise exports to emerging Asia — which includes China, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea plus a handful of smaller nations — rose by 3.7% while shipments to the EU dropped by 13.9%. In other words, U.S. exports to Europe have already been dwindling while Asia has become an increasingly important destination for U.S. goods. That should help U.S. companies avoid too much of a hit from euro zone woes.
``But the development carries risks of its own: Asian economies are growing so strongly at the moment that China in particular is scaling up efforts to damp inflation through tighter monetary policy. While a “soft landing” outcome in which the Chinese economy slows to say at 8% annualized growth rate would be ideal, a harder landing whereby higher interest rates slow demand precipitously can’t be ruled out. Indeed, it’s one of the top risks to the global growth outlook. Though much attention has been focused across the Atlantic lately, it’s actually the Pacific Rim which perhaps should merit closer scrutiny."
As we'd habitually point out, social actions are always dynamic, where people respond to ecological changes rather than being static-except in the eyes of retrogressive anti-development protectionists.
Moreover, the trade and competitive issues are not predicated solely on currency values (or the pixie dust economics for mercantilists), but on many many many factors such as the willingness or openness to trade, economic freedom, hurdle rate, market size and composition and relative costs in terms of tax and regulatory compliance costs, transaction costs, accessibility to finance, raw materials, technology, communication, labor and infrastructure, quality of communication and infrastructure platforms, accessibility to labor, relative labor costs, labor regulations, labor productivity and etc...
Otherwise this shifting trade development wouldn't be happening.
Moreover, this also goes to show of the broadening importance of Emerging Asia's role in global trade.
So yes the composition of world trade is changing, so will geopolitics.
As reported by the Wall Street Journal Blog, (all bold highlights mine)
``Yet John Lonski, chief economist at Moody’s Investor Service, points out an interesting nugget within the March trade figures, released on Wednesday by the Commerce Department, in a note to clients today. March was “a watershed month,” he says, as “For the first time in recorded history, the moving 12-month sum of $227.6 billion of U.S. merchandise exports to Asia’s emerging market countries surpassed the… $223.7 billion of such exports to the European Union.”
``In the year through March, he notes, U.S. merchandise exports to emerging Asia — which includes China, India, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea plus a handful of smaller nations — rose by 3.7% while shipments to the EU dropped by 13.9%. In other words, U.S. exports to Europe have already been dwindling while Asia has become an increasingly important destination for U.S. goods. That should help U.S. companies avoid too much of a hit from euro zone woes.
``But the development carries risks of its own: Asian economies are growing so strongly at the moment that China in particular is scaling up efforts to damp inflation through tighter monetary policy. While a “soft landing” outcome in which the Chinese economy slows to say at 8% annualized growth rate would be ideal, a harder landing whereby higher interest rates slow demand precipitously can’t be ruled out. Indeed, it’s one of the top risks to the global growth outlook. Though much attention has been focused across the Atlantic lately, it’s actually the Pacific Rim which perhaps should merit closer scrutiny."
As we'd habitually point out, social actions are always dynamic, where people respond to ecological changes rather than being static-except in the eyes of retrogressive anti-development protectionists.
Moreover, the trade and competitive issues are not predicated solely on currency values (or the pixie dust economics for mercantilists), but on many many many factors such as the willingness or openness to trade, economic freedom, hurdle rate, market size and composition and relative costs in terms of tax and regulatory compliance costs, transaction costs, accessibility to finance, raw materials, technology, communication, labor and infrastructure, quality of communication and infrastructure platforms, accessibility to labor, relative labor costs, labor regulations, labor productivity and etc...
Otherwise this shifting trade development wouldn't be happening.
Moreover, this also goes to show of the broadening importance of Emerging Asia's role in global trade.
So yes the composition of world trade is changing, so will geopolitics.
