China has spent considerable government resources to develop advanced electric technology industries, such as those that produce electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and solar panels. These efforts have spilled over to international trade as improvements in price and quality have increased the global demand for these goods. One consequence is that passenger cars and batteries have been disproportionately large contributors to the rise in the country’s trade surplus in recent years. This has not been the case, though, for solar panels, as falling prices due to a supply glut pulled down export revenues despite higher volumes.

Foreign holdings of U.S. financial assets are immense, with official estimates putting their current market value at $69 trillion. U.S. holdings of foreign assets are also impressive but much smaller, at $41 trillion. The shortfall in U.S. foreign assets relative to foreign liabilities has been mounting for decades. Yet U.S. investment income receipts—in profits, dividends, and interest—comfortably exceeded income payments until recently. We show that the fading of the net investment income surplus stems from the upward shift in interest rates in the aftermath of the pandemic along with the continued net sales of U.S. assets to foreign investors.

Important elements of the new U.S. trade policy are apparent in data through July. What stands out are the large differences in realized tariff rates by trading partner, ranging from less than 5 percent for Canada and Mexico to 15 percent for Japan and to 40 percent for China. The authors show that the bulk of cross-country differences in tariff rates is explained by two factors: the U.S.-Canada-Mexico free trade agreement and differing sales shares in tariff-exempt categories.

Household saving has soared in the United States and other high-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite widespread declines in wages and other private income streams. This post highlights the role of fiscal policy in driving the saving boom, through stepped-up social benefits and other income support measures. Indeed, in the United States, Japan, and Canada, government assistance has pushed household income above its pre-pandemic trajectory. We argue that the larger scale of government assistance in these countries helps explain why saving in these countries has risen more strongly than in the euro area. Going forward, how freely households spend out of their newly accumulated savings will be a key factor determining the strength of economic recoveries.

The return of U.S. real GDP to its pre-pandemic level in the second quarter of this year was driven by consumer spending on goods. Such spending was well above its pre-pandemic path, while spending on services was well below. Despite the surge in goods spending, domestic manufacturing has increased only modestly, leaving most of the increase in demand being filled by imports. While higher imports have been a drag on growth, the size of this drag has been moderated by the value created by the domestic transportation, wholesale, and retail sectors in selling these goods. Going forward, a rebalancing of consumer spending toward services could give a lift to growth, by shifting demand toward purchases with little import content.

It may be hard to remember given the pandemic, but trade tensions between the United States and China eased in January 2020 with the inking of the Phase One agreement. Under the deal, China committed to a massive increase in its purchases of U.S. goods and services, with targets set for various types of products. At the time of the pact, the U.S. economy was operating near full capacity, and any increase in U.S. exports stemming from the pact would likely have resulted in only a small boost to growth. The environment is now starkly different, with the U.S. economy operating far below potential. While the promised increase in Chinese purchases seems unlikely to be achieved, any appreciable increase in exports from the agreement is now more likely to deliver a meaningful boost to the economy.

In September 2016, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) changed its policy framework to target the yield on ten-year government bonds at “around zero percent,” close to the prevailing rate at the time. The new framework was announced as a modification of the Bank's earlier policy of rapid monetary base expansion via large-scale asset purchases—a policy that market participants increasingly regarded as unsustainable. While the BoJ announced that the rapid pace of government bond purchases would not change, it turned out that the yield target approach allowed for a dramatic scaling back in purchases. In Japan’s case, the commitment to purchase whatever was needed to keep the ten-year rate near zero has meant that very little in the way of asset purchases have been required.

Workers' remittances—funds that migrants send to their country of birth—are an important source of income for a number of economies in Latin America, with the bulk of these funds coming from the United States. Have these flows dried up, given the COVID-19 recession and resulting unprecedented job losses? We find that remittances initially faltered but rebounded in the summer months, performing better than during the last U.S. recession despite more severe job losses. Large government income support payments probably explain some of this resilience. Whether remittances continue to hold up is likely to depend on how quickly the U.S. job market recovers, particularly in hard-hit service industries.

People across the world have cut back sharply on travel due to the Covid-19 pandemic, working from home and cancelling vacations and other nonessential travel. Industrial activity is also off sharply. These forces are translating into an unprecedented collapse in global oil demand. The nature of the decline means that demand is unlikely to respond to the steep drop in oil prices, so supply will have to fall in tandem. The rapid increase in U.S. oil production of recent years was already looking difficult to sustain before the pandemic, as evidenced by the limited profitability of the sector. Now, U.S. producers may have to bear the brunt of the global supply adjustment needed over the near term.

Germany emerged as a leading destination for immigration around 2011, as the country's labor market improved while unemployment climbed elsewhere in the European Union. A second wave began in 2015, with refugees from the Middle East adding to already heavy inflows from Eastern Europe. The demographic consequences of the surge in immigration include a renewed rise in Germany's population and the stabilization of the country's median age. The macroeconomic consequences are hard to measure but look promising, since per capita income growth has held up and unemployment has declined. Data on labor-market outcomes specific to immigrants are similarly favorable through 2015, but reveal challenges in how well the economy is adjusting to the second immigration wave.

Countries in the euro area periphery borrowed heavily from abroad in the years leading up to the sovereign debt crisis, largely to finance increased consumption and housing investment. When the crisis hit in 2010, capital flight by private investors forced these countries to bring domestic spending back into line with domestic incomes—the same adjustment required of countries facing a typical balance of payments crisis. Nevertheless, adjustment to the pullback of private capital was not as harsh as might have been expected, owing to the workings of the euro area’s system for managing cross-border payment imbalances between regional commercial banks. This system, known as Target2, offset much of the capital flight with credits extended collectively by euro area central banks to central banks in the periphery.

Countries in the euro area periphery such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain saw large-scale capital flight in 2011 and the first half of 2012. While events unfolded much like a balance of payments crisis, the contraction in domestic credit was less severe than would ordinarily be caused by capital flight of this scale. Why was that? An important reason is that much of the capital flight was financed by credits to deficit countries? central banks, with those credits extended collectively by other central banks in the euro area. This balance of payments financing was paired with policies to supply liquidity to periphery commercial banks. Absent these twin lifelines, periphery countries would have had to endure even steeper recessions from the sudden withdrawal of foreign capital.

Foreign investors placed roughly $1.0 trillion in U.S. assets in 2011, pushing the total value of their claims on the United States to $20.6 trillion. Over the same period, U.S. investors placed $0.5 trillion abroad, bringing total U.S. holdings of foreign assets to $16.4 trillion. One might expect that the large gap of -$4.2 trillion between U.S. assets and liabilities would come with a substantial servicing burden. Yet U.S. income receipts easily exceed payments abroad. As we explain in this post, a key reason is that foreign investments in the United States are weighted toward interest-bearing assets currently paying a low rate of return while U.S. investments abroad are weighted toward multinationals' foreign operations and other corporate claims earning a much higher rate of return.

The euro area sovereign debt crisis sparked an outflow of bank deposits from countries in the periphery to commercial banks in Germany and other core countries. The outflow highlighted a key aspect of the payments system linking national central banks in euro area countries. In particular, net outflows from private commercial banks in a given country are matched by credits to that county’s central bank, with those credits extended by central banks elsewhere in the euro area. In this post, we explain how the credits affected the adjustment pressures faced by countries in the euro area during the ongoing debt crisis.

For several years prior to 2010, countries in the euro area periphery engaged in heavy borrowing from foreign private investors, allowing domestic spending to outpace incomes. Now these countries face debt crises reflecting a loss of investor confidence in the sustainability of their finances. The result has been an abrupt halt in private foreign lending to these economies. This study explains how the periphery countries became dependent on foreign borrowing and considers the challenges they face reigniting growth while adjusting to greatly reduced access to foreign capital.

The United States buys much more from China than it sells to China—an imbalance that accounts for almost half of our overall merchandise trade deficit. China’s policy of keeping its exchange rate low is often cited as a key driver of that country’s large overall trade surplus and of its bilateral surplus with the United States. The argument is that a stronger renminbi (the official currency of China) would help reduce that country’s trade imbalance with the United States by lowering the prices of U.S. goods relative to those made in China. In this post, we examine the thinking behind this view. We find that a stronger renminbi would have a relatively small near-term impact on the U.S. bilateral trade deficit with China and an even more modest impact on the overall U.S. deficit.

For several years prior to 2010, countries in the euro area periphery engaged in heavy borrowing from foreign private investors, allowing domestic spending to outpace incomes. Now these countries face debt crises refl ecting a loss of investor confi dence in the sustainability of their fi nances. The result has been an abrupt halt in private foreign lending to these economies. This study explains how the periphery countries became dependent on foreign borrowing and considers the challenges they face reigniting growth while adjusting to greatly reduced access to foreign capital.

Cet article examine les causes de la croissance rapide des actifs publics étrangers au cours des dernières années. Les interventions sur les marchés des changes et la croissance des recettes en pétrodollars -les deux : principales sources de financement des récentes sorties de capitaux publics ont des conséquences très différentes pour la politique monétaire nationale et pour la perspective de retour sur investissement qui est celle des investisseurs souverains. L'article analyse ensuite comment la crise a affecté les perspectives d'investissements publics transfrontaliers. Classification JEL : F21, F30, F31

This paper examines the sources of the rapid build-up in official foreign assets of recent years. Foreign exchange intervention and burgeoning petrodollar receipts - the two main sources of financing for recent official outflows - have very different implications for domestic monetary management and for the risk-return outlook facing sovereign investors. The paper then considers how the crisis has affected the outlook for official cross-border investment, arguing that we are unlikely to see an early return to the heavy official outflows of recent years. JEL Classification : F21, F30, F31