Should we really be talking about excess capacity?
Gift this article
Have a confidential tip for our reporters? Get in TouchBefore it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal LEARN MORE
By Cale Brooks, Joe Weisenthal, and Tracy Alloway
September 12, 2024 at 3:00 PM GMT+7
Save
Listen
0:55
Odd Lots
Adam Tooze on the Big Misconceptions of the Chinese Economy
49:43
Listen to Odd Lots on Apple Podcasts
Listen to Odd Lots on Spotify
Subscribe to the newsletter
One of the big buzzwords over the last year or so has been “overcapacity.” There’s a constant line of argument that China is unfairly flooding the world with unprofitable goods and creating huge, unsustainable imbalances. Western countries, particularly the US (but also Europe), have responded by raising tariffs and engaging in domestic industrial policy in order to compete. But is the strategy sound? Are the basic premises of the problem correct? On this episode of the podcast, we speak with Columbia Professor Adam Tooze, the author of several books, as well as the popular Chartbook newsletter. He argues that the overcapacity framing is misguided, and that the US may be making a mistake putting its chips down on an industrial revival. He talks us through some of the actual weaknesses of the Chinese model, as well as its global political reverberations.