MacroScope

After bad economic news from Germany, China and the United States over the past few weeks, here are two more. Brazil and India, two of the world’s largest emerging economies, are increasingly vulnerable to another crisis or to the eventual end of the ultra-loose monetary policies in developed economies after five years of a severe global slowdown.

Weak demand for Brazil’s exports and the voracious appetite of local consumers for imported goods widened the country’s current account deficit to 2.93 percent of GDP in the 12 months through March, the widest gap in nearly eleven years. In dollar terms, that amounts to $67 billion.

To help fund this gap, Brazil could at first loosen the currency controls adopted in the past few years and let more dollars in. But if the dollar flows change too swiftly, Brazil would find itself with three other options: curb spending by growing less, allow a decline in the foreign exchange rate at the risk of fueling inflation, or burn part of its international reserves – which are large, at $377 billion, but not infinite.

Such an outlook could get even more challenging if commodities prices drop – and last week’s tumble in many products sent a reminder of how volatile these markets can be, hurting not only Brazil but many other Latin American exporters.

    ”Whereas the region entered the 2008-09 global financial crisis from a position of relative strength, it is now much more vulnerable to another external shock,” said David Rees, emerging markets economist at Capital Economics, in London.

U.S. exports posted their biggest drop in nearly four years in October, pushing the U.S. trade deficit higher despite a decline in imports to their lowest level in 1-1/2 years.

The data reveal that U.S. exports of goods and services have now decelerated to a year-on-year growth rate of just 1 percent compared with 2.8 percent in the third quarter of 2012 and 11.5 percent last year at this time, writes Deutsche Bank Securities chief U.S. economist Joseph LaVorgna in a research note.

We are concerned by this export trend, not only in October, but over the past several months, because exports have contributed an outsized share to economic growth in the current cycle. If exports fade away as an economic driver in the near-to-medium term, other domestic engines will need to accelerate in order to pick up the economic slack and maintain growth near 2.0-2.5 percent. We think this is possible if fiscal cliff concerns are adequately addressed. The domestic offset will come from continued recovery in the housing sector, as well as pent-up demand from households and businesses.

It used to be the low-end stuff like shoes, clothes and furniture that displaced American manufacturing, then cars and consumer electronics.  A new report by Alan Tonelson, a researcher at the U.S. Business and Industry Council which represents 1,500 American companies, now shows that high-end U.S. industry is facing ever tougher foreign competition in its own backyard.

Tonelson has crunched the numbers since 1997 on high-value, advanced manufacturing – the crown jewel of American industry that is capital intensive and depends on technological superiority such as turbines, pharmaceuticals and electrical engineering. He finds that imported products had captured 38 percent of the $1.63 trillion U.S. market for advanced manufactured products by 2010, up from 24.5 percent when the government started collected the data in 1997.  Only six U.S.-based advanced manufacturers have gained market share in the United States in the 13-year period.  Sectors that are more than 50 percent dominated by foreign producers have risen from eight in 1997 to 32 by 2010, he said.

The high-value core of America’s domestic manufacturing sector is suffering chronic and significant weaknesses. They strongly indicate that advanced U.S.-based manufacturing industries as a whole are failing a basic test of competitiveness – thriving in a market that is not only the world’s largest single market for such goods, but the market that they should know far better than their overseas counterparts.