Speaker 1: A normal country facing a rival like China would be
Speaker 1: building alliances to the rest of the world, not imposing
Speaker 1: tariffs on them. And I think that's what will likely
Speaker 1: come from the change of president in November um and
Speaker 1: I think that's probably the most bullish news for emerging
Speaker 1: markets of all that's going to come out of this,
Speaker 1: this unexpected virus and the impact on the global economy. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the COVID
Speaker 1: global economy to you. And that's what the chief economy
Speaker 1: is for renaissance Capital. Charlie Robertson thinks will be the
Speaker 1: most important effect of COVID nineteen for emerging market economies.
Speaker 1: Developing countries will come out of the crisis faster than
Speaker 1: many people expect, in his view, and the lasting effect
Speaker 1: will come not from the disease itself or the direct
Speaker 1: impact on the global economy, but from President Donald Trump
Speaker 1: not getting form or years to put up trade barriers
Speaker 1: and discourage global investment. I was speaking to Mr Robertson
Speaker 1: and the chief economist of the World Trade Organization, Robert Koopman,
Speaker 1: this week in a panel for City Week, an event
Speaker 1: organized by City and Financial Global More on that in
Speaker 1: a few minutes, but first I wanted to give you
Speaker 1: some on the ground perspective on the future of global trade.
Speaker 1: You might remember, in the early months of the COVID crisis,
Speaker 1: a lot of commentators declared the end of globalization. Governments,
Speaker 1: especially in Europe, started talking about the need for strategic autonomy.
Speaker 1: Never again would companies or countries want to get caught
Speaker 1: short in key medical supplies or discover that key inputs
Speaker 1: to major industries or came from a single factory in Wuhan.
Speaker 1: Production will be brought back home. They said, supply chains
Speaker 1: would shrink, ties with China would be cut. Well, that
Speaker 1: was the theory. Life has turned out to be more complicated,
Speaker 1: and those ties with China in particular have turned out
Speaker 1: to be quite hard to sever A group of Bloomberg
Speaker 1: reporters from across Europe have been looking for firms who
Speaker 1: are rethinking their supply chains as a result of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Their story was published this week, and I'm glad to
Speaker 1: say that one of those reporters, Pyota Skolimowski, is with
Speaker 1: me now. He's in Frankfurt and also spends a lot
Speaker 1: of time covering the European Central Bank, Pyotta. Welcome to Stephanomics.
Speaker 1: So what did you find out in this story? So
Speaker 1: it's not so easy for these firms to cut their
Speaker 1: ties with China high Stephaniely. Indeed, it's it's a tough
Speaker 1: one despite the fact that Europe is really trying to
Speaker 1: wean its economies off from the dependence on China and
Speaker 1: other Asian companies are Asian suppliers. We talked to a
Speaker 1: few companies, one in Italy, for example, producer of shoes,
Speaker 1: where the chairman of the company basically said, well, Chinese
Speaker 1: workers are are just better at doing what he called
Speaker 1: jim shoes. But but the fact here is is actually costs,
Speaker 1: so he has production costs in China are still sevent
Speaker 1: seventy five percent lower than in Italy. So that's a
Speaker 1: big factor of why he's not really eager to move
Speaker 1: everything to Italy. So as as long as there are
Speaker 1: no subsidies from the government or support in one form
Speaker 1: or another of lower taxes for example, and he's not
Speaker 1: going to move production closer to home. And it also
Speaker 1: applies to other sectors where as a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: they are key to to to the strategy of of
Speaker 1: shortening supply chains in Europe, for example, pharmaceutical companies. We
Speaker 1: talked to one of the executives who said, well, actually
Speaker 1: China dominates one of the market for ingredients to what
Speaker 1: he called active ingredients for for drugs that his company
Speaker 1: is producing. So it's really difficult to suddenly move away
Speaker 1: from that and just go and and mind suppliers somewhere else.
Speaker 1: And finally, there's also another factor that simply companies in
Speaker 1: Europe reli very heavily on exports, so China is not
Speaker 1: really only just a supplier of components, supplier of elements
Speaker 1: to their cars. It's a big booming market, so they
Speaker 1: cannot really afford to not to be there, and they're
Speaker 1: already building a big supply chain around China. They as
Speaker 1: an example, they volks Wagon actually bought two companies or
Speaker 1: shares in two companies that have to do with battery
Speaker 1: cells and another with electric cars in China just at
Speaker 1: the at the peak of the of the COVID pandemic
Speaker 1: in April. It sort of tells you that obviously there
Speaker 1: is a push to to shorten supply chains, but there
Speaker 1: are factors that that are kind of pushing into the
Speaker 1: opposite direction, which will make it harder for companies to
Speaker 1: make it a big change in the strategy. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I have to say that is something that we have
Speaker 1: heard coming out of Asia as well, and our reporters
Speaker 1: and analysts who are involved in the tech industry as
Speaker 1: a similar message that the likes of Apple have invested
Speaker 1: so much in these quite sophisticated supply chains and it's
Speaker 1: much easier said than done to start disentangling from China
Speaker 1: in particular, there's just a sunk costs involved apart from
Speaker 1: apart from anything else. But let's hear I think we
Speaker 1: we do have a bit of that interview that you
Speaker 1: did with the German pharmaceutical executive Peter Goldschmidt, who is
Speaker 1: chief executive of the generic pharmaceutical maker Status, So let's
Speaker 1: hear from him. Now, why you really start thinking about
Speaker 1: moving victory doing test transfer into higher cross areas where
Speaker 1: no one knows who is able to pay it, and
Speaker 1: before before this creates an additional risk because of tech
Speaker 1: transfer is also a risk we should really think about
Speaker 1: relatively in my view, easier fast fixes. I mean, are
Speaker 1: you also trying to say that actually there is because
Speaker 1: you mentioned forty percent of all active parmaceutical ingredients are Chinese.
Speaker 1: I mean, there is really no alternative to China as
Speaker 1: a supplier of a key ingredient in what you're producing. No.
Speaker 1: I look, the point is there are of us a
Speaker 1: lot of alternatives. I could start and buying an API
Speaker 1: company and start producing this also in Germany. The only
Speaker 1: problem I have is unanormous circumstances. No one will buy
Speaker 1: it from me because I'm too expensive. The reason why
Speaker 1: it is in China is that the quality China has delivered,
Speaker 1: most organizations obviously in Europe couldn't compete on a price letter.
Speaker 1: That's why we have this situation. And of course if
Speaker 1: people would think, hey, that's an attractive business I should
Speaker 1: go to, then more people would do it. But obviously
Speaker 1: the business is not so attractive. So if the governments
Speaker 1: are building uh the substitutes in order that you have
Speaker 1: prices that you can have a company, and API is
Speaker 1: a is a worldwide business, you can produced just API
Speaker 1: for Ostia. You could do it. It's the question who
Speaker 1: pays the price. Everything is technically absolutely possible, absolutely no doubt.
Speaker 1: It's just a question of time and money. So in
Speaker 1: that sense, you think that government in its hopes or
Speaker 1: actually Europe hide. If you look at the whole strategy
Speaker 1: these days, there's going to build of a disappointment that
Speaker 1: this is not going to be first of all a
Speaker 1: quick process and secondly there will have to be a
Speaker 1: lot of steps before we even even even go there
Speaker 1: in terms of and maybe there are after a quick
Speaker 1: fixed solutions like the storage of API, for example in
Speaker 1: a gift country, and then you have an assigned producer
Speaker 1: in a crisis time who has then to make sure
Speaker 1: that they can produce the volume based on this API
Speaker 1: right before you do like this big picture. I mean,
Speaker 1: my problem in the discussion is not that this could
Speaker 1: be a possible solution that you bring more whatever kind
Speaker 1: of reduction pharmacy in production back to Germany. It's a
Speaker 1: political decision which costs money and has implications on our
Speaker 1: direct crisis in Germany. The Otho Skolomowski, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Thank you well. As it happens, I put exactly this
Speaker 1: question about the future of global supply chains to the
Speaker 1: chief economist of the World Trade Organization, Robert Kopman in
Speaker 1: my city Wheek panel that I mentioned at the start,
Speaker 1: and we also had Charlie Robertson, chief economist for Renaissance Capital.
Speaker 1: On that panel, he was much more outbeat about the
Speaker 1: future of emerging market economies than others I've talked to
Speaker 1: on Stephanomics in recent weeks. I guess when you listen
Speaker 1: to him, you do need to remember that his firm
Speaker 1: specializes in investing in emerging market economies, so you can
Speaker 1: judge for yourself whether his story stacks up. But I
Speaker 1: started by asking Robert Koopman about his forecast for and beyond.
Speaker 1: We hear the projection for a global trade for declining
Speaker 1: in an optimistic scenario of about thirteen percent, anywhere up
Speaker 1: to thirty two percent in a pessimistic scenario. The latest
Speaker 1: data suggests we're more on track for the optimistic scenario,
Speaker 1: a trade decline of around twelve thirteen maybe four percent,
Speaker 1: with a slow recovery. Though for one and into two.
Speaker 1: I think the drivers of the slow recovery or weakness
Speaker 1: expected weakness and consumption, and particularly expected weakness and investment.
Speaker 1: We don't think that firms are gonna have a very
Speaker 1: confident view of the future of the global economy, and
Speaker 1: I think that UH investment is going to be relatively weak.
Speaker 1: Investment is a significant driver of global trade going forward.
Speaker 1: I think the likely recovery for trade is a trade
Speaker 1: will probably get back to close to its long term
Speaker 1: average growth rate of about one and a half times
Speaker 1: global GDP growth. But I think it's going to be
Speaker 1: a regal globalization. It's going to be a reorganization of
Speaker 1: globalization that we've seen in the past twenty or thirty years,
Speaker 1: probably more regional supply chains, a lot more digital trade
Speaker 1: than we've seen in the past that's been growing fast.
Speaker 1: I think it's gonna it's growing faster now and continue
Speaker 1: to grow fast. And I think you'll see more flexible
Speaker 1: production processes, maybe regional agreements to help to respond to
Speaker 1: spikes in demand as a result of either health prices
Speaker 1: or climate crisis. So we'll see. I think this reorganization
Speaker 1: of globalization maybe um with slower growth, and the long
Speaker 1: term implications of slower trade growth usually means slower productivity
Speaker 1: growth in the future, so we have significant concerns around that.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot of conversation about what happens to
Speaker 1: global supply chains as a result of this crisis and
Speaker 1: the immediate After all the immediate stages of the crisis,
Speaker 1: a lot of talk about bringing production home or at
Speaker 1: least diversifying supply chains, not just in response to COVID
Speaker 1: but also worries around around China. But we've had some
Speaker 1: of our reporting this week. In fact, in Europe we're
Speaker 1: looking at companies who have been trying to shorten the
Speaker 1: supply chains and struggling and realizing that it's going to
Speaker 1: be just too costly to do that. They've got too
Speaker 1: much wedded to the very sophisticated approach they had before.
Speaker 1: So what is your view when you talk about reorganization
Speaker 1: of globalization, is that diversification of supply chains? What is it?
Speaker 1: Do you think it's mainly diversification. Most global supply chains
Speaker 1: are regional. You think about automobiles. Of automobile supply chains
Speaker 1: are regional, but there can be that one part, that
Speaker 1: one critical part that is from outside the region that
Speaker 1: could be difficult to procure domestically but called up the
Speaker 1: entire product. I think they'll find ways to diversify those
Speaker 1: supply chains, not bring that want to obscure but very
Speaker 1: important product to some local production facility. I do think
Speaker 1: they'll use inventories, will night see, particularly for those kinds
Speaker 1: of products. Firms will change their just in time inventory
Speaker 1: approach to something that's a little more balanced. They'll still
Speaker 1: use just in time for those things that they don't
Speaker 1: think are that disruptive or that they can easily diversify
Speaker 1: UM and have multiple suppliers, but for those things, those products,
Speaker 1: those components that they can't my my suspicion is they'll
Speaker 1: carry more inventory of that. And keep in mind, you know,
Speaker 1: the started as a supply shock in China, but you
Speaker 1: know you can have a fire or a hurricane in
Speaker 1: the Gulf of Mexico that knocks out your domestic supply
Speaker 1: chain just as badly. UM. So you know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that the strategy you're reshoring really holds up in
Speaker 1: the long term, but weaker growth, weaker investment that does
Speaker 1: undermine their integration and globalization. Charlie Robertson, I know that
Speaker 1: you're looking at strategy from a global perspective of renaissance,
Speaker 1: and I wonder how do you think about the recovery
Speaker 1: and particularly the fact that we now are in this
Speaker 1: what you might call a messier stage where some countries
Speaker 1: are coming in and out of lockdown. We're potentially having
Speaker 1: second waves. We're not sure about the consumer. How the
Speaker 1: consumer is going to behave in these first few months
Speaker 1: of recovery. How are you seeing things? Yeah, I'm chief
Speaker 1: economists of an emerging market Frontier Bank, Renaissance Capital, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to focus mostly on that. But what
Speaker 1: what's been striking to us is the success that emerging
Speaker 1: markets have had in fighting the disease, at least in
Speaker 1: East Asia. Um, and it's worth remembering the two thirds
Speaker 1: of emerging markets equities are don't have the virus anymore.
Speaker 1: That's China, Career, Taiwan, Thailand, they make up of M
Speaker 1: S c I emerging markets. They have no virus, so
Speaker 1: it's not even an issue of a V shape or
Speaker 1: a W shape or anything else. Everyone can go back
Speaker 1: to restaurants, everyone can go back onto planes, travel, etcetera.
Speaker 1: At least internally is back to normal. So it looks
Speaker 1: pretty v shaped in in what is two thirds of
Speaker 1: emerging markets, either they've beaten the virus or they said
Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do to stop the virus. Either way,
Speaker 1: I think their economic recoveries are going to look somewhat better. Charlie,
Speaker 1: I'm struck by, um what you were saying about em
Speaker 1: because when I talked to our emerging market economists, it's
Speaker 1: quite a bleak picture that comes out of it. Not
Speaker 1: for some of the countries that you were talking about,
Speaker 1: but when you talk about India or so that, large
Speaker 1: parts of Africa, a big some parts of Latin America.
Speaker 1: It feels like the risk is that this crisis is
Speaker 1: going to shut the door on a lot of countries
Speaker 1: who were on their way into the emerging market and
Speaker 1: potentially beyond little make it much harder for them to
Speaker 1: continue to progress, and actually they could lose ten or
Speaker 1: fifteen years of progress as a result of this. Is
Speaker 1: that fair? I mean, you talked about the countries that
Speaker 1: have already emerged to some extent, and they are well
Speaker 1: represented in the MSc I index and everything else. But
Speaker 1: those that hadn't built their capacity by the risk is
Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to now in the
Speaker 1: conditions of the next piece because they're going to be
Speaker 1: so hit by this crisis. Isn't that a concern? I mean,
Speaker 1: the numbers I've been talking about in places like sub Sahara,
Speaker 1: and what I've been struck by is that the average
Speaker 1: age of those dying in the UK is about eighty
Speaker 1: years old, and the percentage of Nigerians aged two or
Speaker 1: more is zero. The number of Kenyans aged eighty or
Speaker 1: more is also zero, and that they're just not going
Speaker 1: to be hit in that way. UM. What I think
Speaker 1: has actually been much more damaging than the virus for
Speaker 1: sub Sahara or lower income countries has been this trend
Speaker 1: towards protectionism, the lack of trade, the discouragement of foreign
Speaker 1: direct investment globally in recent years. And I think perhaps
Speaker 1: the most important change that's going to come upout as
Speaker 1: a result of this virus is the political change. In
Speaker 1: November in the States, we put out a piece a
Speaker 1: month or two ago saying that no US president is
Speaker 1: ever re elected after a recession in his first term.
Speaker 1: And I've been saying that and upsetting my Democrat friends
Speaker 1: in New York for some years about Trump and saying
Speaker 1: that he was going to win this election because there
Speaker 1: was no recession in the States. Um, And they were
Speaker 1: very unhappy with me saying that. Of course, that's change now,
Speaker 1: and he has symbolized protectionism more than anybody else in
Speaker 1: the global economy. But actually he's really made a difference.
Speaker 1: You've seen FDI foreign direct investment flow into America and
Speaker 1: not flow out of America. You've had negative FDI or
Speaker 1: in fact, if you like, FDI flows net into the
Speaker 1: States for the last two years, and that has meant
Speaker 1: no FDI into emerging markets. Who wants to set up
Speaker 1: a factory in emerging markets when there could be a
Speaker 1: big tariff war set against you, um, and it's it's
Speaker 1: really hurt growth. Um. So I think there's political change
Speaker 1: that now I think inevitable in November. It is going
Speaker 1: to be very important. Not that America and Chinese relations
Speaker 1: are going to be perfect. They were not, and that's
Speaker 1: going to be a rivalry that will continue for years.
Speaker 1: But a normal country facing a rival like China would
Speaker 1: be building alliances to the rest of the world, not
Speaker 1: imposing tariffs on them. Vietnam should be America's best friend
Speaker 1: right now. India should be America's best friend right now.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what will likely come from the
Speaker 1: change of president in November. One I don't think is
Speaker 1: gonna We're not gonna see big FDI in there's a
Speaker 1: global recession. No one's gonna be putting money into anywhere,
Speaker 1: including emerging markets. It's not going to be great from
Speaker 1: that perspective. But I think this protections theme which has
Speaker 1: been so painful and has supported the stronger dollar. Of
Speaker 1: course as well, that protectionist theme that's turning at the
Speaker 1: end of this year, and I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: most bullish US for emerging markets of all m that's
Speaker 1: going to come out of this this unexpected virus and
Speaker 1: the impact on the global economy and Robert Coopman, you know,
Speaker 1: if you're sitting in a TV economist of the w
Speaker 1: d O, do you share Charlie's view that if you
Speaker 1: see Trump defeated in the election, that one could continue
Speaker 1: to have challenging relations between the US and China, but
Speaker 1: it wouldn't necessarily in fit the global trading system, because
Speaker 1: I think that's that's an interesting point Charlie made that.
Speaker 1: I think I hadn't heard other people tend to say
Speaker 1: that the US China battle will infect everything else and
Speaker 1: make the global trading system a much more protection is
Speaker 1: much more fractured place. But how do you see it? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't think that the election is going to necessarily
Speaker 1: bring about big positive effects in the trade area. There
Speaker 1: are scarring effects. I think, just like we're talking about
Speaker 1: the COVID crisis. The political scarring effects from the the
Speaker 1: Trump policies are likely to remain. Um. I think there
Speaker 1: will be somewhat mitigated and perhaps and I do hope
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, significantly mitigated. But the debate around trade started
Speaker 1: to change, um you know, in the mid um and
Speaker 1: Trump has certainly taken that rather aggressively forward. There's this
Speaker 1: focus on US China, do not forget about US du
Speaker 1: Those stresses are pretty significant, and they've been there for
Speaker 1: a long time and normally the two regions countries have
Speaker 1: worked well together to keep those sort of um channeled
Speaker 1: into something like the w t O Dispute Body or
Speaker 1: competing regional trade agreements, you know, so they've been somewhat
Speaker 1: productively managed. But I think that's gonna be something that
Speaker 1: remains to be seen how that works out. There will
Speaker 1: be a change in administrations in in the fall, actually
Speaker 1: change an administration. When happened until the beginning of the
Speaker 1: new year, a couple of things, the trade war, tariffs
Speaker 1: and the uncertainty around that. So the terrorists on China
Speaker 1: costly to the US, somewhat costly to China caused a
Speaker 1: lot of trade diversion, contributed to uncertainty, But the bigger
Speaker 1: contributor to uncertainty was auto teriffs on the EU, general
Speaker 1: trade policy from the United States, the sort of weakening
Speaker 1: of the centrality of the w t O in the
Speaker 1: in the trading system, which was largely pushed by US
Speaker 1: positions in the G twenty. But all of those effects
Speaker 1: were relatively small. The COVID effects are huge. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're just massive compared to the trade war tariffs, but
Speaker 1: both have potential long term implications for growth UM. A
Speaker 1: big concern from COVID for me is automation. I think
Speaker 1: firms are gonna try to find ways to substitute for
Speaker 1: human workers as much as possible. On the service side,
Speaker 1: we can easily distribute those workers, perhaps through remote work.
Speaker 1: That's a bit harder. In manufacturing, I think we'll see
Speaker 1: significant investments in manufacturing that could undermine than UM a
Speaker 1: lot of workers and their ability to find good work,
Speaker 1: good paying jobs. Thanks for listening to Stephanomics. We'll be
Speaker 1: back next week with more on how COVID nineteen is
Speaker 1: transforming the global economy. Remember you can always find us
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg Terminal website, app or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts and For more news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics,
Speaker 1: you should follow as Economics on Twitter. This episode was
Speaker 1: produced by Magnus Hendrickson and the story we spoke about
Speaker 1: at the start of the program was written by Flavia Rotundee,
Speaker 1: Jeanette Newman, Joo Lima, and Pyota Skolimowski. Was also edited
Speaker 1: by Alas Shaheen. Special thanks to Charlie Robertson, Pyotas Olimowski,
Speaker 1: Robert Kopman, and City and Financial Global. Lucy Meekin is
Speaker 1: the acting executive producer of Stephanomics and the head of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Podcast is Francesca Levy. M