U.S. Trade Deficit Is Unlikely To Spur a Dollar Freefall
- A surprisingly large number of foreign companies buy supplies, sell products and calculate their profits in dollars, according to a new survey that implies the huge U.S. trade deficit may not be as threatening as most economists think.
The survey, released yesterday by the Conference Board and the Group of Thirty, independent economic-research organizations, found that more than 50% of companies based abroad run their businesses on the U.S. dollar. The survey also found that 25% of companies outside the euro zone set prices and buy materials based on the euro.
The findings suggest that the U.S. trade deficit isn't likely to prompt the long-feared worst-case scenario, in which foreigners abandon dollar assets, sending the greenback into a freefall, driving up interest rates, slowing U.S. growth and chasing away the foreign capital that has become the lifeblood of the American economy.
The survey responses imply that "absent a dollar crisis," or 1970s-style economic stagnation, "these flows are going to continue," despite the burgeoning trade deficit, said Gail Fosler, the Conference Board's chief economist.
Indeed, the survey, based on responses from 372 chief executive and chief financial officers in 38 countries in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, found that companies consider exchange-rate volatility a relatively minor issue when deciding where to invest their money. Foreign-exchange volatility "doesn't have a large, measurable effect on the amount of foreign investment they're doing," said Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve and the initiator of the survey.
Executives are much more likely to consider market potential, political risk, the local legal environment and other issues when deciding in which countries they want to invest.
Economists have long assumed that foreigners who earn dollars exporting to the U.S. want to convert most of those dollars immediately into their own currencies. Under that scenario, foreigners would be increasingly worried that the U.S. trade gap may foreshadow an impending crash in the dollar's value. Fearing the worst, they might pull many of their assets out of the U.S. to avoid large losses as measured in their home currencies -- while inadvertently provoking the very plunge in the dollar that they feared. At the same time, the falling dollar would increase U.S. exports, cut imports and push the U.S. trade situation back toward balance, according to traditional economic theory.
While the dollar has fallen significantly against the euro and yen over the last year, its slide hasn't prompted a panicked flight from the greenback or dollar-denominated securities. Nor has the U.S. trade balance corrected itself.
The researchers ascribe that mystery to a shift in the way foreigners -- in Asia, Latin America and elsewhere -- use dollars. Instead of thinking of dollars as foreign currency, they think of them more as their own currency. "The survey results ... imply a demand for U.S. dollars for transactions purposes that is to some degree independent of the economic fundamentals of the United States itself," the report's main author, Marina v.N. Whitman, professor of business administration at the University of Michigan, wrote.
The trade deficit may still, however, signal other defects in the U.S. economy -- low domestic savings or uncompetitive businesses, for instance. And the researchers warned that the trade gap could be creating another unforeseen global risk. Each year, the U.S. economy is in deficit, it is essentially injecting $500 billion or more in cash into the world economy, a possible impetus for inflation in developing countries.
"I think we may have been concerned about the trade deficit for the wrong reasons," said Ms. Fosler.
美国贸易逆差会引发美元暴跌吗？
最新一份调查显示，以美元购买设备、出售产品和计算利润的外国公司数量多得惊人，这意味著美国巨额贸易逆差也许并不像大多数经济学家想得那么可怕。
于周四公布的这份调查是由世界大企业联合会(Conference Board)和Group of Thirty这两个独立经济研究组织进行的。调查发现，50%以上的外国公司把美元作为经营计价货币，而25%的非欧元区外国公司把欧元作为定价和购买材料的货币。
上述发现表明，美国的贸易逆差不太可能陷入那种让人们担心已久的最糟糕局面，即外国人放弃美元资产，使美元一落千丈，进而推动利率上扬，使美国经济发展放缓，让美国经济中不可缺少的外国资本逃之夭夭。
世界大企业联合会的首席经济学家吉尔?福斯勒(Gail Fosler)说，调查说明并不存在美元危机，即上世纪70年代的那种经济停滞现象，尽管贸易逆差不断扩大，外国资本仍将继续流入。
这份对北美、欧洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲的372位首席执行长和首席财务长的调查显示：当企业考虑投资地点时，它们普遍认为汇率波动是个小问题。此次调查的发起人、美国联邦储备委员会(Federal Reserve，简称Fed)前任主席保罗?沃尔克(Paul Volcker)说，汇率变动对企业的海外投资行为没有重大影响。
企业主管们在决定投资地点时关注的重点是市场潜力、政治风险、投资地的法律环境以及其他相关因素。
长期以来，经济学家们一直认为那些通过出口赚取美元的外国公司希望把手头的大部分美元立即换成本国货币。根据这种观点，这些外国企业就非常担心美国的贸易逆差会对美元造成重大冲击。害怕出现最坏情况的他们会把许多资产撤出美国，以避免蒙受汇兑损失，而此举将在无意中造成他们担心的美元的暴跌。根据传统的经济学理论，美元的暴跌又将提振美国的出口，同时遏制进口，使美国的贸易恢复平衡。
虽然美元去年兑欧元和日圆的汇率出现大幅下跌，但这并没有引发以美元计价的资产的大量流失，美国的贸易也没有自动恢复平衡。
研究人员把这种不可思议的现象归于外国企业利用美元的方式发生了变化。他们不再把美元视为外国货币，而是更多地当成本国货币。此份调查报告的主要作者、密歇根大学(University of Michigan)的商业管理教授玛利娜?怀特曼(Marina v.N. Whitman)写道，调查表明，把美元作为交易工具的需求在一定程度上是独立于美国经济基本面的。
但是，美国的贸易逆差还是反映了美国经济的一些不足，如国内储蓄率很低以及企业缺乏竞争力等。研究人员警告说，贸易逆差可能会引发一场无法预见的全球性危机。美国经济每出现一年贸易逆差，这就意味著美国向全球注入了至少5,000亿美元的资金，因而成了发展中国家爆发通货膨胀的潜在动因。
福斯勒说：“我认为，我们对贸易逆差的担心也许并无道理。“
