Could Rising Household Debt Undercut China’s Economy?

Hunter Clark and Jeff Dawson



Although there has been a notable deceleration in the pace of credit growth recently, the run-up in debt in China has been eye-popping, accounting for more than 60 percent of all new credit created globally over the past ten years. Rising nonfinancial sector debt was driven initially by an increase in corporate borrowing, which surged in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis. The most recent leg of China’s credit boom has been due to an important shift toward household lending. To better understand the rise in household debt in China and its implications for financial stability and China’s economic performance, it is important to examine the expansion in household credit, how the rise in debt compares to international experience, and the associated risks.

The U.S. Dollar’s Global Roles: Where Do Things Stand?

Linda S. Goldberg and Robert Lerman



Previous Liberty Street Economics analysis and New York Fed research addressed the potential implications for the United States if the dollar’s global role changed, noting that the currency might not retain its dominance forever. This post checks the status of the dollar, considering whether any erosion in the dollar’s international standing has occurred. The evidence to date is that the dollar remains the world’s dominant currency by broad margins. Alternatives have not gained extensive traction, albeit this does not rule out potential future pressures.

Highlights from the Fourth Bi-annual Global Research Forum on International Macroeconomics and Finance

Ozge Akinci, Roland Beck, Paola Donati, Linda Goldberg, and Livio Stracca



Achieving and maintaining global financial stability has been at the forefront of policy discussions in the decade after the eruption of the global financial crisis. With the purpose of exploring key issues in international finance and macroeconomics from the perspective of what has changed ten years after the crisis, the fourth bi-annual Global Research Forum on International Macroeconomics and Finance, organized by the European Central Bank (ECB), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was held at the ECB in Frankfurt am Main on November 29-30, 2018. Participants included a diverse group from academia, international policy institutions, national central banks, and financial markets. Among the topics of discussion: the international roles of the U.S. dollar, the evolution of global financial markets, and the safety of the global financial system.

The Perplexing Co-Movement of the Dollar and Oil Prices

Thomas Klitgaard, Paolo Pesenti, and Linda Wang




Oil prices and the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar against the euro have often moved together over the past decade or so, but it is not at all clear why they should. The standard interpretation of oil price movements as a response to global oil supply and demand shifts makes it unlikely that the correlation stems from the dollar’s effect on oil prices. In addition, the notorious difficulty in predicting currency moves makes it hard to believe that oil prices dictate the dollar’s value. Improbability aside, however, in this blog post we document the tendency for the value of the dollar to rise relative to European currencies when oil prices fall, and we consider a possible explanation for the correlation.

The Impact of Import Tariffs on U.S. Domestic Prices

Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, and Noah Kwicklis



The United States imposed new import tariffs on about $283 billion of U.S. imports in 2018, with rates ranging between 10 percent and 50 percent. In this post, we estimate the effect of these tariffs on the prices paid by U.S. producers and consumers. We find that the higher import tariffs had immediate impacts on U.S. domestic prices. Our results suggest that the aggregate consumer price index (CPI) is 0.3 percent higher than it would have been without the tariffs.

Tax Reform and U.S. Effective Profit Taxes: From Low to Lower

Matthew Higgins




The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) reduced the federal corporate profit tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Adding in state profit taxes, the overall U.S. tax rate went from 39 percent, one of the highest rates in the world, to 26 percent, about the average rate abroad. The implications of the new law for U.S. competitiveness depend on how these statutory tax rates compare with the actual rates faced by U.S. and foreign companies. To address this question, this post presents new evidence on tax payments as a share of profits, as well as analytical measures of tax impacts on profitability. We find that the U.S. effective tax rate was already below the average rate abroad prior to enactment of the TCJA, and that it is now well below the rate in most countries.

Do Import Tariffs Help Reduce Trade Deficits?

Mary Amiti, Mi Dai, Robert C. Feenstra, and John Romalis



Import tariffs are on the rise in the United States, with a long list of new tariffs imposed in the last few months—25 percent on steel imports, 10 percent on aluminum, and 25 percent on $50 billion of goods from China—and possibly more to come. One of the objectives of these new tariffs is to reduce the U.S. trade deficit, which stood at $568.4 billion in 2017 (2.9 percent of GDP). The fact that the United  States imports far more than it exports is viewed by some as unfair, so the idea is to try to reduce the amount that the nation imports from the rest of the world. While more costly imports are likely to reduce the quantity and value of imports into the United States, the story does not stop there, because we cannot presume that the value of exports will remain unchanged. In this post, we argue that U.S. exports will also fall, not only because of other countries’ retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports, but also because the costs for U.S. firms producing goods for export will rise and make U.S. exports less competitive on the world market. The end result is likely to be lower imports and lower exports, with little or no improvement in the trade deficit.

The Transatlantic Economy Ten Years after the Crisis: Macro-Financial Scenarios and Policy Responses

Moreno Bertoldi, Paolo Pesenti, Hélène Rey, and Petr Wagner



“The Transatlantic Economy Ten Years after the Crisis: Macro-Financial Scenarios and Policy Response,” was the focus of a conference, jointly organized by the New York Fed, the European Commission, and the Centre for Economic Policy Research in April 2018. These three institutions had previously collaborated on a series of events related to transatlantic economic relations, including a workshop in April 2014 and a conference in April 2016. Ten years after the global financial crisis, this conference came at a crucial time in the history of the relationship between the United States and the European Union, and provided an opportunity to revisit and assess recent policy responses. A number of questions were addressed by the panelists: Is the world economy back on a sustainable growth path or have we entered a secular stagnation era with persistently low interest rates and inflation? How large are the spillovers of monetary and fiscal policies? Have we done enough to maintain financial stability and deal with cross-border resolution issues, which have been one of the most vexing topics in the regulatory space?

Good News, Leverage, and Sudden Stops

Ozge Akinci and Ryan Chahrour




One of the major debates in open economy macroeconomics is the extent to which capital inflows are beneficial for growth. In principle, these flows allow countries to increase their consumption and investment spending beyond their income by enabling them to tap into foreign saving. Periods of such borrowing, however, are associated with large trade deficits, external debt accumulation, and, in some cases, overheating when these economies operate beyond their potential output level for an extended period of time. The relevant question in this context is whether the rate at which a country is taking on external debt has useful predictive information about financial crises.

Will New Steel Tariffs Protect U.S. Jobs?

Mary Amiti, Sebastian Heise, and Noah Kwicklis



President Trump announced a new tariff of 25 percent on steel imports and 10 percent on aluminum imports on March 8, 2018. One objective of these tariffs is to protect jobs in the U.S. steel industry. They were introduced under a rarely used 1962 Act, which allows the government to impose trade barriers for national security reasons. Although the tariffs were initially to apply to all trading partners, Canada and Mexico are currently exempt subject to NAFTA negotiations, and implementation of the tariffs for the European Union, Argentina, Australia, and Brazil has been paused. South Korea has received a permanent exemption from the steel tariffs and will instead be subject to a quota of 70 percent of its current average steel exports to the United States. In this post, we consider how the steel tariffs could affect U.S. trade and employment. We focus on steel since the steel industry employs about three times as many workers as the aluminum industry, although qualitatively our conclusions apply to both. We argue that the new tariffs are likely to lead to a net loss in U.S. employment, at least in the short to medium run.