So we are left, it seems, with two equally unappetizing options. China can maintain its currency practices, but at the risk of large global macroeconomic imbalances and a major political backlash in the US and elsewhere. Or it can let its currency appreciate, at the risk of inducing a growth slowdown and political and social unrest at home. It is not clear that advocates of this option have fully comprehended its potentially severe adverse consequences.
There is, of course, a third path, but it would require re-writing the WTO’s rules. If China were allowed a free hand with industrial policies, it could promote manufactures directly while allowing the renminbi to appreciate. This way the increased demand for its industrial output would come from domestic rather than foreign consumers.
It is not a pretty solution, but it is the only one. The great advantage of industrial policies is that they enable growth-promoting structural change without generating trade surpluses. They are the only way to reconcile China’s continued need for industrialization with the world economy’s requirement of lower current-account imbalances.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2009.
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