Tag Archives: Deindustrialization

A short paper for FIDE on the so-called Argentine pendulum. The pendulum was the phrase used by Marcelo Diamand to discuss the persistent boom and bust cycles associated with left of center developmentalist governments, and liberal governments that promoted adjustment. The suggestion in this paper is that in reality the previous pendulum was mostly political, and about constraining the left of center ability to redistribute income (higher wages), often restricting democratic institutions....

There has been a lot of writing about Bidenomics (a name that might stick, like Reaganomics; nobody really thinks of Clintonomics as a thing) recently. It is fundamentally about the return of industrial policy, even if I personally think that this is less momentous than what people think. Don't get me wrong, both the rediscovery of fiscal policy after the 2007-9 recession (no fiscal packages after the 1990-91 or 2001 recessions, but packages after both 2007-9 and Pandemic in 2020), and the...

I have written on deindustrialization before (see here and here), and commented on the CHIPS Act, and how it was one of the first, if not the first, re-shoring of manufacturing jobs into the US. Krugman just wrote a column on that, noting that the concern with manufacturing is now bipartisan, as Biden policies follow Trump's, he argues the former more successfully than the latter. Also, I should note that the the pressures for US corporations to reorganize their supply chains away from China...

New working paper at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI). From the abstract:The paper analyzes the relation between premature deindustrialization in Latin America with what is termed premature financialization. Premature financialization is defined as a turn to finance, organized as an industrial concern, which is a vehicle for accumulation before the process of industrialization has reached maturity. This contrasts with developed countries where financialization occurs after an...

Where the Digital Things Are I have suggested for a while here (this entry from May 2011) that deindustrialization in the US has not meant a decline in technological hegemony. Consider big tech digital firms in that respect. From the new Trade and Development Report: The widening gaps across firms have been particularly marked in the digital world. Of the top 25 big tech firms (in terms of market capitalization) 14 are based in the United States, 3 in the European Union, 3 in China, 4...

I have discussed here the role of Chinese growth in the decrease of US manufacturing jobs (note that I was, and still am somewhat critical about simplistic stories of deindustrialization). At any rate, for other reasons I was looking at the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) and ended up with the two graphs below. After the Chinese entry in the WTO in 2001 the rise in Brazilian imports is astounding. Now Chinese imports of manufacturing goods are about the same share as imports from...

By Denis Melnik and Andrés Lazzarini (Guest bloggers) As the first days of Donald Trump’s presidency unfold, the prevalent attitude to his surprising victory among the various breed of the liberal intelligentsia all over the globe is pretty much the same as it was on the morning of November 9, 2016 — that of a profound shock. Apart of purely emotional reactions (ranging from desperate ‘Bernie could have won’ to hopeful ‘Trump will be impeached almost immediately’), this shock reveals...

It's Manufacturing Stupid! There will be a lot to say about the election from all kinds of pundits. On the left, many will blame the coverage of emailgate, Comey, the FBI, third party candidates, Bernie and Bernie bros, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, the electoral college and God knows what else. And certainly all of these things did play a role. But it was minor. The election was lost in the old Rust Belt, the decadent manufacturing center that has been hit hard by trade deals (as...

So besides the coup in Brazil (which was all but confirmed by the last revelations, if you had any doubts), and the electoral victory of Macri in Argentina, the situation in Venezuela is reaching a critical situation, and it would not be surprising if the Maduro administration is recalled, even though right now the referendum is not scheduled yet.The economy in Venezuela has collapsed (GDP has fallen by about 14% or so in the last two years), inflation has accelerated (to three digit levels;...

The Conference Board argues that Chinese official data should be taken with some skepticism. Nothing new there. They have adopted a new measure, which implies "Chinese economic growth at a more realistic 3.7 percent" for the recent past. In this scenario, interestingly enough, "it’s likely that the bulk of China’s slowdown has already taken place since 2011, even if unapparent in official statistics." So the picture is probably worse than the official one (as shown below, from The...