James Chau:
Your expertise in global economics has led to a number of books, including one that you authored in 2014 called “Unbalanced: The Codependency of America and China.” What do you think the conditions are that have shifted the balance between the two nations?
Stephen Roach:
The book ended on the note of a great question. I said that a codependent relationship, particularly between the United States and China, was not a stable and sustainable relationship. The risk was that one of the partners would go its own way, and that would lead to a reactive response by the one who was left behind. As China has rebalanced, the U.S. was sort of left in the dust. The scorned partner, the United States, lashed back. We saw a very destructive trade war during the past four years that unfortunately looks like it is continuing in the early months of the Biden administration.
James Chau:
Well, you recently wrote about the two events, the Anchorage summit being one. Let's not forget the trade deficit that is ongoing. How would you advise Washington and Beijing to proceed?
Stephen Roach:
I think that the Biden administration is in many respects trapped in the venomous bipartisan political sentiment that now exists in the United States against China. That makes the political strategy of the Biden administration more difficult to extricate from this current conflict. Nevertheless, that's what we have political leaders to do, to take tough and sometimes courageous stands against the other groundswell of bipartisan support. There are three things that I would urge the two nations in conflict to do: Number one, end the trade war, roll back the tariffs and eliminate the so-called phase one purchase requirements that were an unrealistic strategy from the start. Number two, find areas of mutual interest such as climate change and global health policy where trust can be rebuilt. And number three, don't shy away from the tough structural issues like innovation, policy force, technology transfer, cybersecurity and intellectual property rights protection, but use a more systematic framework to address them, such as a bilateral investment treaty, which was under negotiation prior to the Trump administration.
James Chau:
Is there enough ability, will and forgiveness from both sides to move forward in the directions which you now propose?
Stephen Roach:
Ability? Yes. Will, and forgiveness — those are two of the most difficult aspects of this conflict. China, rightly or wrongly, has a hard time forgiving those who raise questions about its intentions, especially after the so-called century of humiliation that began with the Opium Wars in the mid-19th century. The U.S. also feels wounded when it suffers economic problems and experiences a trade deficit at the same time. It tends to direct the blame on others. It did that with Japan 30 years ago, and it's doing that with China today. But America has a multilateral trade problem and had deficits with 96 nations in 2020 that it cannot resolve by taking bilateral action against anyone, China today or Japan 30 years ago.
James Chau:
Can we circle back to Anchorage? Because that links to another of your recently expressed deep concerns around rising rhetoric and tensions. As you know better than most people, there's been calls on both sides, not only the Americans but also the Chinese, to decouple. How real is that threat of separation? Should we imagine it as one side hitching their wagon away from the other?
Stephen Roach:
Well, decoupling is a slippery concept, and yet there are visible manifestations, certainly from the U.S. side, of an effort, in particular on the technology front, to wean America's dependence on China-centric supply chains. The aggressive posture toward Huawei, and its multitude of suppliers, both in China and elsewhere around the world, is a case in point. There is a view, unsubstantiated, of course, that Huawei poses an enormous existential threat to the integrity of America's telecommunications platform now and in a future dominated by 5G technology. There's no verification of that intention. But in the case of the United States and its security community, it's move now and rationalize or explain later. I think that's a dangerous approach. Supply chains have been critical in linking not just the U.S. and China but the U.S. and China to a multitude of other nations around the world. It's taken years to construct the supply chains of the current globalization and disentangling them or decoupling them would be a very painful outcome. So we have to move very carefully and adjudicate the validity of the reasons for moving down this path of decoupling before we just embrace it without much thought.
James Chau:
But of course, the world is much larger and deeper than two nations alone. As we look around that world, a lot of the economic priorities have been reordered, especially in the past year due to the pandemic. What from that basket of actions could have a lasting impact going forward?
Stephen Roach:
In terms of the pandemic itself?
James Chau:
In terms of the pandemic, but also in terms of the actions leading up to that and what you see coming after globally.
Stephen Roach:
The world economy was actually in a pretty vulnerable place before the pandemic hit. In 2019, world GDP growth had slowed to about 2.9 percent, according to the IMF. I remember writing an article about that before the pandemic hit, that this is dangerously close to what we thought was the global recession threshold of only 2.5 percent world economic growth. I had no idea that COVID-19 was around the corner when I wrote this. But I cautioned that with such a slow pace of growth in 2019, a shock could tip the world into recession, unfortunately quite easily, and that's what happened. While the world now appears to be on a path of recovery, I don't think we can lose sight of the underlying pre-COVID vulnerability that was very much evident in the world. It's wishful thinking to think that we can simply pretend that the world is now a stronger and more resilient place in the aftermath of this unprecedented shock and global recession. Just because we've seen a significant injection of what I think is unsustainable, a monetary and fiscal stimulus at very low levels of interest rates, that is not a way to run the world in a post-COVID future.
James Chau:
How would you ask us to prepare, particularly the world's most vulnerable communities who've been hit by the inequality of this pandemic?
Stephen Roach:
That's a great question and one that I'm thinking deeply about myself. I think that crises have an uncanny way of really forcing us to rethink some of our priorities and values that shaped the way in which the world is governed, and the way in which various systems deal with difficult economic, social and ultimately political problems as well. That word inequality that you just used is one that is clearly evident in the aftermath of this COVID crisis — that we can even speak of an aftermath right now. In some countries like India, there's no aftermath at this point at all. But the pandemic, of course, has taken a devastating toll on those least capable of being able to provide medical support to their citizens. The policies that have been put in place by major central banks and fiscal authorities have benefited financial markets more than they have the real economies. We talk a lot about the wealth effect from a strong rally in equity markets. Just think about what a wealth effect is. It's designed to help the wealthy, not the poor. So, this has been a recovery of growing and vast and worrisome inequality from the standpoint of health, political tensions and economic rewards. I think the post-COVID world has got to address this issue of inequality once and for all.
James Chau:
Well, I was going to close up by asking Mr. Roach about what China and the United States — which do so much to shape the world's fortunes — could do to shape the world's economies post-pandemic, whenever that time may arrive. But six years ago, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Xi Jinping and Ban Ki-moon worked so well together on the architecture and execution of the Paris agreement. Will climate change return to be the game changer, say in 2021 and far beyond?
Stephen Roach:
I think that climate and global health are two areas of mutual interest for both China and the United States that could be key in rebuilding the trust that has been broken and shattered by this destructive trade war. Trust is sort of a fuzzy amorphous construct, but if two countries can come together grappling with these existential threats, then they are better positioned to deal with some of the thornier trade and structural issues. So I am encouraged that we do see now, for the first time in my lifetime, a serious commitment to climate change and peaking of emissions and zero-carbon commitments by both China and the United States. To the extent that we can continue to move forward with enforceable agreements and progress in that regard, that would be a very encouraging development. I would couple that, though, to making similar progress on global health policy, alleviating the tensions of vaccine nationalism that have been destructive, as the developing world is far less secure in this post-COVID era than the rich developed world is. But these are issues that can be addressed; we have the science to do it. You raised earlier the question of whether or not we have the will to do it. That will be the ultimate test of this post-COVID climate.
James Chau:
I just want to finish by going back to your role, where so many people remember you serving and the bold ambitions that you had, as chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, and also for a lot of that time as the firm's chief economist. Many people will always be interested in the hot topics of technology and sustainability. If you were to look into the crystal ball that you've created through your work, what do you see both countries achieving in the 25- to 50-year benchmark around environmental, social and corporate governance?
Stephen Roach:
I think the sort of intersection of technology and productivity is an area that I've studied as Morgan Stanley's chief economist, as a chairman and as an academic now for over 35 years. It's not easy to move ahead in the area of technological innovation and translate that into measurable and sustainable increases in productivity, especially when externalities such as climate and pandemics come into play. China is clearly mindful of shifting its own technology platform away from importing technology from others with potentially significant negative feedback, depending on how that importing of technology occurs to move into more of an indigenous innovation platform. Homegrown innovation is done by its own scientists, engineers, and researchers, rather than getting into the contentious way of acquiring innovation from others. The U.S., in the same sense, has to redouble its own efforts. We've been a leader in innovation and technology for most of the post-World War II era, but we've been underinvesting in research and development. We've been underinvesting in higher education. We've created very powerful technology platforms that are driving productivity change around the world right now. We can't take for granted our ability to keep doing that in the future. So I go back to that intersection between innovation, technology and productivity, especially in an interconnected supply chain in a global world. Both countries face considerable challenges in pushing ahead on those fronts in the years ahead.
James Chau:
Well, you obviously care very much about the world and the state of the world and the humanity within. So in the last question, may I ask you: What would you say to people who are living through the chaos of the current state of the world and who are deeply confused about what lies ahead? What would you tell them not as an economist, not as an academic, but simply as Stephen Roach?
Stephen Roach:
It's a thoughtful question, and the easy answer that I think you hear from politicians is we're a resilient race. We've been through this time and time again, and we've always bounced back. You look at economic numbers and they show a precipitous collapse during lockdown, a very strong bounce back on reopening. We've got to do more than just extrapolate on the basis of the arithmetic snapback of reopening. Of course, we were going to have strong numbers post-lockdown, but we've got a lot of heavy work to do before we can speak with great confidence about the inherent resilience of our system. Resilience is something that has to be earned, not taken for granted. In the lessons of COVID, the lessons of climate change, the lessons of still vast swaths of poverty afflicting the developing world that are taking such a devastating toll on strong countries, potentially strong countries such as India are a worrisome reminder of what we need to do to make our systems more resilient in the future, and we're a long way away from that. We have to think long and hard about resilience in a world still afflicted by potentially devastating inequality.
James Chau:
Stephen Roach, senior fellow at the Jackson Institute of Global Affairs at Yale University, thank you very much for your words of advice, which we'll listen to very carefully. And thank you for steering much of the world today.
Stephen Roach:
Thank you very much. Pleasure.
(The foregoing transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.)