China’s GDP in 2021 was 114 trillion yuan and in 2022 the yuan has weakened against the US dollar.
The yuan is now 7.12 to 1 US dollar.
China’s nominal GDP is now 16.0 trillion instead of 17.7 trillion last year.
It was 115 yen to 1 US dollar at the end of 2021. It is now 144 yen to 1 US dollar. Japan’s nominal GDP was $5.5 trillion but it is now $4.4 trillion.
The dollar has strengthened 15% against the Euro and 17% against the british pound.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Regarding the US dollar. The largest single most productive agricultural area on the planet. The largest navigable river system in the world reaching all through it. Intercostal waterways from Texas to Boston. A plethora of natural resources that could allow it to be almost completely self-sufficient were it necessary. And a government and culture that, in most times, is relatively encouraging to prosperity.
Neighbors to the North and South that cannot support the numbers and industry necessary to militarily challenge us. The Atlantic guarding the East, and the Pacific the West.
As a pundit on the internet said, “It’s hard to completely mess this up . . . and we’ve tried, repeatedly.”
It all combines to make the US dollar the most stable currency on the planet and, ultimately, a government’s ability to provide a stable currency is the greatest single service it can provide. Arguably, almost everything else a country should be taking care of, national defense, criminal justice, contract enforcement, disaster relief, education, transportation, and even environmental protection, to name a few, all tend to stabilize (or destabilize, if done badly or not at all) its currency.
Some will point out that the US dollar is not the strongest currency on the planet, but it is the world reserve currency — because the currencies of New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Brunei, Libya, and Canada would all be incapable of serving in its stead, for very obvious reasons (Singapore is, after all, an independent city, rather than one we think of as a country, and in Australia, despite its size, 90% of the population lives on one fifth of one percent of the land for a reason, and it has only 19 cities over 100,000 people, contrasted with 310 in the continental US). Last year, you would also have been told that the British Pound, the Euro, and possibly the Swiss Franc or the Kuwaiti Dinar were stronger than the US dollar–but evidently not more stable. Several countries even use the US dollar as their own currency, and a good many other currencies are strongly tied to the US dollar.
Until fairly recently, there was some talk about how China’s currency could displace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. I don’t hear much of that lately.
A strong US dollar seems like should be a good thing. Unfortunately, it’s strong because of (relatively) good things, but being strong is, itself, not a terribly good thing unless you are a tourist in England, or possibly Europe, at the moment.
The reason for this is that it reduces our foreign revenues, in short, money the US has invested in other parts of the world simply cannot return as high a yield to investors, as the money earned in such a way will be less than it would have been after it is converted to US dollars. This tends to have a negative impact on the stock market, even on stocks in companies that have no operations in foreign countries. Similarly, if we insist on being paid in US dollars (which should be easy as 59% of the money held in all the world’s central banks is in US dollars) this means it is either much more expensive (and this reduces demand) or discounts must be offered, also reducing returns.
“A plethora of natural resources that could allow it to be almost completely self-sufficient were it necessary.”
Forget the “almost”; There is literally no natural resource that the US could not be self-sufficient in if we set out to be; The resources we’re dependent on getting from other countries are only because our government has chosen to put our own reserves beyond reach.
Yep. They used to teach my dad in school that you could surround the US with a wall and it could operate in isolation, without the need for trade.
And giving up Parmesan?
Europe is self sufficient in oil and gas but they refuse to dig beneath their feet, they feel it is politically unacceptable to attack the helpless rock with fracking,of course this only goers along with their political need to be dominated by fascists and communists.
The US would be much better off there would be less global warming,and Russia would have less resources if Biden had approved the Keystone 2,but of course he despises Canada,anything to hurt our neighbors to the Northland of course to hurt ourselves and help Putin.
I still support him, but his energy decisions are terrible. Climate change demands we along with Europe tax every item leaving China at higher rates, but Hunter Biden makes millions a month working for the Chinese Petroleum company.
I read they had problems in finding titanium, when they were making the SR71 recoinassance plane. In fact they called it “unobtanium”.
Ok, apparently Brian had messed up and uploaded the wrong map (it was an earthquakes epicenter map… Or maybe a map of volcanos)
Now it’s a correct map, with the worse Mercator projection distortion I ever saw. Greenland is larger than Africa
Surely a Mercator projection is a Mercator projection? The cutoff latitude may change, but the size distortion is completely dictated by the projection formulae.
Looks like a standard Mercator to me, except for the omission of Antarctica.
I’m a complete outsider. I was relieved the Americans got rid of Trump, but bemused that the best replacement was this doddery old bloke who seemed asleep most of the time.
But…. Biden actually seems quite good now?
He’s not particularly good; the US dollar is gaining value because people will generally flock to it in times of uncertainty, no matter how the actual US economy is doing.
Granted, he’s not as terrible as some of the doom-sayers were predicting, but there are some strong Jimmy Carter vibes.
He’s doing a wonderful job of killing Russians which the whole world can be grateful for,I wish we’d send them F-16’s but he prefers the hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians.
Unlike Trump,he works with Germany France and Italy instead of letting them know how wothless and immoral they are, which is the right approach, you have to work with the allies you have no matter their lack of worth, and the rest of Europe has been pretty great.
Europe has stored quite a bit of gas,Germnasy would not need so much but their wind farms aren’t properly connected.
US Dollar Strength Reduces Nominal GDP of China and Other Countries *when measured in US dollars* (duh!)
That’s why they use PPP to compare living standards.
Edgy kids might as well make comparisons in gold weight, I’m surprised this doesn’t show up more often across the internet…
Yeah, I’m kind of wondering why anybody would care about nominal GDPs in the first place. It does seem like a trivial point, everybody uses adjusted GDPs for anything that matters.
The point about adjusting GDP, such as PPP, is that you have to adjust it differently depending on what subject you are discussing.
If the subject is say building a road, then the costs in Russia, or China or UK, or USA will probably line up fairly well with PPP. There is a lot of local labour, there is a lot of basic consumables, there is machinery but it’s simple stuff like bulldozers that most industrial powers build themselves.
But if you’re talking about building up a conscript army? Then it scales with unskilled labour costs, that that makes the poorer countries look even better. Nigeria can probably raise a million men and give them rifles for less money than a US division.
But a space program? Not so good. High end electronics cost the same world over, because it’s small and light enough that transport costs are near zero. Experienced high end engineers can just hop on a plan and get a job in Europe or Australia or Singapore, so you can’t pay them $25k/year in Nigeria. So the costs don’t follow PPP at all and work out a lot more like the actual exchange rate.
The US is the proverbial one eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. As bad as our governmental “leadership” is everyone else everywhere else is worse. Hence the dollar appreciation.
It’s not so much that our leadership is less awful, especially at the moment. But we’re so well situated in terms of self-sufficiency in energy, food, and resources, that it’s hard for even awful leadership to reduce us to the circumstances of other countries.
To paraphrase Churchill,
“The USA will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other options”
which unfortunately, is more than can be said for a lot of other countries. Least bad is a local optimum.
Let’s be honest- Churchill was rarely in a position to make judgements on others doing the right thing
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.
Why the map of earthquakes?