Trade Surpluses and German Economic Nationalism

Sone readers might be interested in this excellent blog post by Thomas Piketty on the alleged asymmetry between Germany and France.

The core takeaway is that both countries have similar levels of productivity – measured in terms of GDP per hour worked.

The difference between Germany and France is that they use their high-levels of productivity in very different ways. France consumes and invests what it produces. Germany sells it abroad.

The excessive and persistent trade surpluses in Germany (outside small oil producing states and tax havens) “are unprecedented in economic history”. Europe has a German problem.

Labour productivity (GDP per hour worked) 1970-2015

Domestic consumption and investment in % of GDP (1970-2015)

 

The Political Economy of Brexit; London Will Adapt.

Everyone is trying to second guess the negotiating strategy of Theresa May, and how the EU will respond. No country should be more concerned about this than Ireland, the only EU country to share a border with the UK. Next week, the Irish government will host an all Ireland civic dialogue.  Political economy considerations have never been more important.

In hindsight Brexit might be conceived as a long-term inevitability, which can be traced back to the structural fault-lines of EU enlargement, and the free movement of peoples into Europe’s largest ‘open’ labour market. Helen Thompson, a professor at Cambridge has suggested as such:

  1. The euro crisis politicized the city of London, which became the default offshore finance centre for euro clearing.
  2. EU enlargement, and then the euro crisis, turned Britain into Europe’s employer of last resort, turning it into an offshore labour market.
  3. This spurred and politicised a latent immigration concern within large swathes of public opinion, and the electorate.
  4. Very quickly, the euro crisis, and the response to it, not least the Fiscal Compact Treaty, exposed the future of Europe as a two tier Union: between the Euro area, and the rest of the EU.
  5. The balance of power (i.e. the rise of Germany) changed and weakened Britain, who were increasingly “outside” the EU process, despite being the employer of last resort for the euro area.

In terms of the political economy of Brexit, the biggest risks don’t really pertain to the city of London (who’s core priority will be to allow some sort of system for the free movement of workers within their sector). The city’s strengths, paradoxically, make it a source of weakness. The Conservative government are confident London’s financial service based economy will adapt. This is much less the case with medium-tech trade and manufacturing (think Nissan and car manufacturing).

For all sectors of Britain’s political economy, a Norway style deal is probably preferable (European Economic Area). Theresa May, and political elites, are not likely to push for this, as it implies complete free movement, and won’t wash electorally. However, Theresa May will want access to tariff free trade, primarily to ensure that the North of England is not badly effected, and that firms such as Nissan in Sunderland don’t pull out and move to Spain. Manufacturing has more to lose than Finance.

This implies that Theresa May will push for a customs union – tariff free – allowing imports for British based manufacturing supply chains. The question then is whether it is a customs union for everything? Theresa May could opt out of agriculture, and then use this as a bargaining card in negotiating other international trade deals, outside the EU.

The question of free movement will be determined by how Teresa May considers Ireland. If she gives priority to maintaining free movement within Ireland (north and south), which I think she will, then this implies there will be no visa controls at the British borders. Hence, it is probable that Theresa May will aim to get a series of sectoral deals – and allow for the free movement of people within sectors, particularly ICT and Finance. This is what ultimately matters for the city of London.

Those most affected within the City of London will be legal services. British lawyers, who predominately rent off the finance sector, will no longer have a hearing on mergers and acquisitions within EU law. But I can’t see Theresa May negotiating a strategy to ensure British lawyers have access to EU courts. What she will want to ensure, on behalf of business and finance elites, is that the city remains a magnet for high-skilled talent. This could be achieved with sectoral deals.

Britain’s main bargaining card is that their consumption-oriented economy, and open labour market, in addition to a high-tech cluster in London, has carried the employment burden of the Eurozone’s labour market woes, in addition to absorbing so much labour from central and eastern Europe. Germany has done little, if anything, to increase domestic demand, to compensate this. So it’s worth asking, absent the liberal-oriented British economy, where will unemployed EU workers go?

 

Ireland ranks poorly in Western Europe in latest WEF competitiveness report

The World Economic Forum (WEF) have released their global competitiveness report. Ireland ranked 23rd, which was one of the lowest in Western Europe. Eleven other countries in Western Europe were ranked higher: Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, UK, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France and Austria.

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Inadequate supply of infrastructure was identified as by far the biggest deficiency, and the most problematic factor for doing business. In light of the upcoming budget it’s probably worth noting that all European countries who scored better than Ireland have a higher tax to GDP ratio. Revenue as a percentage of national income is higher in all these countries, which can be probably be taken as a measure of state capacity.

The full report can be read here, and the full listings here.

The European Commission Have Sparked a Revolution Against Corporate Tax Avoidance

The European Commission made a decision yesterday that is likely to revolutionise corporate tax law. To understand this, it’s important to step outside the narrow lens (and self interest) of ‘Ireland Inc’ and consider the global political background, from the EU perspective.

Globalization has made it much easier for footloose capital and international firms to move across borders, and avoid paying tax. This means it’s increasingly difficult to apply the principle that tax should be paid in the country where profits are made. It’s estimated that more than half of the foreign profits made by US firms are booked in tax havens.

In response to this, scholars in international political economy have long argued that to manage the worst effects of globalization, whilst retaining the democratic legitimacy of the state (tax and spend capacity), governments should shift governance up a level, beyond the nation-state.

The EU is perhaps the most successful example of this type of supranational governance in the world. It has an executive arm (the EU Commission) with legislative agenda-setting powers, and a supranational Court. In effect, European integration can be conceptualized as a political response to market globalization. But it has no tax and spend capacity.

The core actor driving the process of integration is the Commission. This was most obvious during and after the Eurozone crisis, where member-states, including Ireland, agreed to delegate more economic governance powers to Europe. This included the two-pack; the six-pack; the macroeconomic imbalance scorecard and the European semester. Lest we forget, the Commission was part of the Troika, who actively intervened in fiscal policies of the state, not least in terms of water charges.

All member-states of the EU have actively delegated sovereignty to the Commission to manage a whole raft of policy areas: agriculture, trade, fisheries, competition, the single market, regulation, health and safety. For members of the Eurozone, this pooling of sovereignty is even deeper, and explicitly includes monetary and fiscal policy competences.

Hence, to suggest the Commission has suddenly started intervening and undermining Irish sovereignty is somewhat disingenuous.

Social democratic oriented economies, such as France, Sweden or Denmark, have always tended to view the Commission as an agent of “neoliberalism“. It is perceived as having a narrow commitment to market liberalization, with no capacity to tax and spend. The implication is that the EU cannot build those social institutions that are necessary to compensate for the negative effects of increased market liberalization.

Liberal market oriented economies, such as Ireland and the UK (and parts of the German polity), have tended to view the European Commission as an agent of bureaucratic interference. It is perceived as a political actor that tries to expand it’s executive powers in those policy areas that should remain at the level of the nation-state: employment, social protection, welfare and taxation. The EU is a single market, and should be designed to reduce the transaction costs of trade, nothing more.

These two competing visions of the EU came to a head yesterday.

But for anyone who spends time in Brussels, it’s been a long time coming. In a world of global capital flows, the argument across European capitals has been that, at a minimum, the EU Commission must ensure tax coordination, to ensure that MNCs pay their taxes where profits are made.

Those governments, such as Ireland, that turn a blind eye, and facilitate corporate tax avoidance, have been increasingly viewed with hostility, as they are effectively robbing European citizens of scare taxable resources. This has often been missed in Ireland, as there has not been a public debate on corproate tax avoidance, and therefore it’s not a salient issue.

The EU response to this growing demand in Europe to stop corporate tax avoidance has always been, well, how? It’s a massive collective action problem that requires an assertive Commission, willing to confront rogue member-states, challenge capital interests, and be open to legal challenge. This is exactly what happened yesterday. The Commission concluded that those tax benefits that enable multinationals to avoid tax is a form of illegal state aid, and falls directly under competition law.

The fight is on.

More precisely, the Commission found that Ireland enabled Apple to avoid taxation on almost all of the profits generated by the sale of Apple products in the EU single market. In effect, Ireland facilitated Apple’s ability to build a colossal stock pile of cash that amount to hundreds of billions of dollars. As the Guardian editorial noted today, this is nothing more than “a rainy day fund for the super-rich“. If the Irish government challenge the Commission’s ruling, they are effectively legitimising this, even though they have closed off the tax loophole that made it possible.

All of the focus within Ireland has been whether the government should take the 15 billion. But again this totally misses the point. It’s not Irelands money. It’s tax that should have been paid in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Germany, France and other member-states of the EU, who, like most European countries implementing austerity, are pretty cash strapped.

This is why Ireland has been rightly called out.

In essence, it’s a distributional conflict. Ireland has facilitated one of the richest companies in the world to engage in corporate tax avoidance (money that should have been paid to other governments in the EU). In ordinary language use, this would be called theft.

In responding to the Commission, a clever strategy by the government would have been to accept the ruling; highlight that they have closed off the tax loophole; admit they are in a bit of a legal bind now; and then focus on what really matters in the long run for high-tech FDI: the human capital externalities of thick labour markets, which has been made possible by the process of European integration.

The EU Commission has acted in the general interest of European citizens and business. Hence, it’s decision is being welcomed almost everywhere outside Ireland. The EU Commission has shown that it can act as a supranational counterweight to the untrammelled forces of globalization.

 

New Release: The Central Bank Quarterly Bulletin 2016

The central bank have just released their 2016 quarterly bulletin. Box A on Page 11 discusses the farce of the 26.5 per cent growth.

Quote:

“These developments reflect the statistical ‘on-shoring’ of economic activity associated with a level shift in the size of the Irish capital stock arising from corporate restructuring and balancing sheet reclassification in the multinational sector and also growth in aircraft leasing activity”.

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