Financial Times je včeraj citiral izjavo nemškega ministra za gospodarstvo Petra Habecka o ameriški napovedi vojne Evropi:

“It’s like a declaration of war,” Robert Habeck, Germany’s vice-chancellor and economics minister, said last month.

The object of his ire was not the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor Chinese military exercises around Taiwan. Instead, he was complaining about the raft of subsidies and tax breaks for manufacturers on offer in the US — Germany’s most important ally.

“The [Americans] want to have the semiconductors, they want the solar industry, they want the hydrogen industry, they want the electrolysers,” Harbeck told a business conference.

Ever since the Biden administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act for clean energy and tech last year, there has been a mutinous mood among some American allies in both Europe and Asia at the scale of the new US subsidies.

What the US sees as a strategy to reverse deindustrialisation in deprived areas, allies have interpreted as a thinly veiled exercise in protectionism because it encourages companies to shift plants and customers to Buy American.

Na to izjavo in nasploh miselnost v ozadju se je odzval Micahel Pettis, zelo dober ameriški ekonomist, specialist za zunanjo trgovino, in izjavo označil kot hipokrizijo in da ni večje hipokrizije, kot je prosta zunanja trgovina.

Pettis se je vrnil dve desetletji nazaj, ko je Nemčija po uvedbi evra izkoriščala zaščito evra za spodbujanje konkurenčnosti svojega izvoza (o tem sem na blogu že ničkolikorat pisal: če bi Nemčija imela lastno valuto, bi v primeru presežka v trgovinski bilanci nemška marka apreciralaa, kar bi izničilo izvozne presežke (uravnotežilo trgovinsko bilanco), ker pa je evro ostal podcenjen, je Nemčija lahko skoraj dve desetletjji dosegala trgovinske presežke zaradi tečajnega spodbujanja konkurenčnosti). Dodatnok k temu je Nemčija še zadrževala rast plač in tako umetno spodbujala konkurenčnost izvoza (tudi o tem sem tukaj večkrat pisal). Spodaj je malce več Pettisove razlage.

Naaj samo še omenim, da ameriška uvedba subvencij res pomeni napoved vojne – pomeni trgovinsko vojno na subvencijskih steroidih. Tovrstne politike (proizvodne in izvozne subvencije) so bile doslej za članice Svetovne trgovinske organizacije (WTO) eksplicitno prepovedane. Toda ker se je njena najmočnejša članica (ZDA) odločila, da se tega ne gre več, tudi WTO temu ne oporeka in tega ne sankcionira. Duh protekcionizma je bil dokončno izpuščen iz steklenice in zdaj niso več dopuščene samo (prej prepovedane) trgovinske vojne ZDA proti Kitajski, ampak se je zdaj začela globalna trgovinska vojna vseh proti vsem. V čuden svet gremo. Nazadnje smo takšno situacijo imeli v 1930-ih letih (po uvedbi ameriškega Smoot-Hawley zakona leta 1930), ko je ameriški protekcionizem vodil v totalno eskalacijo trgovinske vojne in kasneje v drugo svetovno vojno.

Strašljivi časi so pred nami.

For years Germany protected its manufacturers behind subsidies and an undervalued euro, funded by downward pressure on wage growth.

The result was that Germany’s share of global manufacturing expanded relative to that of the US and its EU partners.

Its huge trade surplus was a measure of the extent to which the competitiveness of German manufacturers was based on policies designed to prevent wages from growing in line with productivity. Workers received too low a share of what they produced to consume most of it.

Germany’s irresponsible trade policies were costly for the US and devastating for the EU, and so it was inevitable that the world turn against a global trading system so ferociously gamed by countries like Germany. Berlin is in no position to complain.

The good news (for German workers and the middle class, not for German exporters) is that German wages seem finally to be catching up with productivity, and it is this, not US industrial policy or Chinese car subsidies, that is forcing Germany to rebalance its trade.

Vir: Michael Pettis, twitter

In še dodatna razlaga nemške hipokrizije glede spodbujanja konkurenčnosti: