UPR - Recinto de Río Piedras

Durante los últimos años, cada semestre he impartido cursos subgraduados diseñados para exponer al estudiante por primera vez a la economía.  El curso de Economía 3022 enfoca sobre la teoría macroeconómica y sus aplicaciones. En ella estudiamos, entre otros, los temas de demanda y oferta, producción agregada, crecimiento, política fiscal y monetaria. Uno de los conceptos básicos de esta disciplina es el Producto Interno Bruto (o PIB) de los países, denominado en el idioma ingles como Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Lo definimos como la suma del valor monetario de todos los bienes y servicios finales producidos en la economía doméstica y vendidos en mercados organizados durante un periodo específico de tiempo (usualmente un año). Esta medida es la que sirve de base para calcular el crecimiento económico de los países, que tanto escuchamos en los medios noticiosos mundiales.

A medida que profundizamos en este concepto, que en mi opinión gran parte del discurso económico actual "interpreta" erróneamente como una medida precisa del bienestar económico, también debemos abordar sus deficiencias. Quizás la más obvia sea que no ofrece ninguna indicación de cómo se distribuye el PIB/GDP entre la población del país. En cuanto al bienestar económico, es menester mencionar los Índices de Desarrollo Humano, publicados por el Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo. Medir el desarrollo humano nos ayuda a comprender cómo varían las vidas y los medios de vida de las personas en todo el mundo y cómo han cambiado a lo largo del tiempo, utilizando indicadores como la esperanza de vida, los niveles de educación y el PIB/GDP per cápita, entre otros, proporcionando así una visión más amplia que el simple crecimiento económico. Sin embargo, quisiera enfocar en esta breve nota sobre un aspecto que pienso crucial: El papel de las rentas económicas como un subconjunto que se incluye junto con los salarios y las ganancias en las cifras del PIB/GDP. Las rentas económicas generalmente se definen como pagos realizados a los propietarios de activos (tierras, recursos naturales, propiedad intelectual o licencias regulatorias). El economista y premio Nobel Joseph Stiglitz, argumenta que el rápido aumento de la desigualdad económica se debe a la búsqueda de rentas, un proceso mediante el cual los ricos y las corporaciones utilizan su poder para manipular la economía y obtener una mayor porción de la riqueza sin crear valor nuevo. En el siguiente vídeo, el economista Michael Hudson explica este fenómeno en relación con el PIB/GDP con mucho más detalle:

Vistia mi blog en la siguiente dirección:

La Realidad Aumentada

President Trump has also discussed adopting SUBSTANTIAL CHANGES TO DOLLAR POLICY. Sweeping tariffs and a shift away from strong dollar policy can have some of the broadest ramifications of any policies in decades, fundamentally reshaping the global trade and financial systems. There is A PATH BY WHICH THESE POLICIES CAN BE IMPLEMENTED WITHOUT MATERIAL ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES, BUT IT IS NARROW, and will require currency offset for tariffs and either gradualism or coordination with allies or the Federal Reserve on the dollar. POTENTIAL FOR UNWELCOME ECONOMIC AND MARKET VOLATILITY IS SUBSTANTIAL, BUT THERE ARE STEPS THE ADMINISTRATION CAN TAKE TO MINIMIZE IT.

Trump has praised the reserve status of the dollar and threatened to punish countries that stop using the dollar for reserve purposes.

I expect these tensions will be resolved by a suite of policies designed to increase burden sharing among trading and security partners: rather than attempting to end the use of the dollar as the global reserve currency.

I've taught international economics at the graduate level and can attest to the difficulties one has as a teacher in effectively conveying how this convoluted system works to students. However, in order to understand the implications of Trump's policies, you have no choice but to (try to) learn something about the system. A good place for the layman to start is with the following introductory video:

You can find a transcript of the above video HERE.

Along with American professor of finance Michael Pettis of the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, I believe that “Both the United States and the world at large would benefit from a less dominant U.S. dollar”, although I have my own reasons. You can find Prof. Pettis's work cited in THIS article (scroll down to the heading Are there costs to dollar dominance?).

What about President Donald Trump's current tariff policies, which seem to have the world in such a state of chaos? I came across the following "tweet" by an economist the other day: {the} US tariff agenda is basically designed to cause a negotiated dollar weakening; (now WH chief economist), gave a speech yesterday which basically suggested that reserve status for dollar was a burden which others might need to 'write checks' for. Intrigued, I did an online search which turned up THIS article on the Trump administration's tariffs and currency policy. Aside from my personal animus toward the militarism of the United States, the supremacy of the US dollar is counterproductive if the intention is to bring back manufacturing investment to the USA. Economist Simon Tilford and researcher Hans Kundnani are succinct in their aptly titled article for Foreign Affairs:

Dollar hegemony ... has domestic distributional consequences - that is, it creates winners and losers within the USA. The main winners are the banks which act as intermediaries and recipients of the capital inflows and that exercise excessive influence over US economic policy. The losers are the manufacturers and the workers they employ. Demand for the dollar pushes up its value, which makes US exports more expensive and curtails demand for them abroad, thus leading to earnings and job losses in manufacturing. The costs have been borne disproportionately by swing states in regions such as the rust-belt - a consequence that in turn has deepened socioeconomic divisions and fueled political polarization. Manufacturing jobs that were once central to the economies of these regions have been offshored, leaving poverty and resentment in their wake. It is little surprise that many of the hardest-hit states voted for Trump in 2016.

Despite being behind a pay-wall the entire Foreign Affairs article is worthwhile. It was published in 2020 and is prescient, giving badly needed context to what is happening today. Further on it states:

The domestic costs of accumulating large capital flows are likely to increase and become more destabilizing for the US in the future. As China and other emerging economies continue to grow and the US's slice of the global economy continues to shrink, capital inflows to the US will grow relative to the size of the US economy (...)  Given these mounting economic and political pressures, it will become increasingly difficult for the US to create more balanced and equitable growth while remaining the destination of choice for the world's excess capital, with the overvalued currency and deindustrialization this implies. At some point, the US will have little alternative but to limit capital imports in the interests of the broader economy - even if doing so means voluntarily giving up the dollar's role as the world's dominant reserve currency.

If you would prefer avoid the pay-wall, perhaps the following video will be more to your liking. It takes on the issue of President Trump's tariffs head-on:

A more "bricks and mortar" treatment of the topic of the difficulties of enticing manufacturing back to the United States is provided by Molson Hart, the founder and CEO of Viahart, a consumer products company, HERE.

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-cádiz-5a0347169

Muy estimados estudiantes del curso CISI3211, reciban saludos cordiales.

Para mí será un verdadero honor poder impartir este curso ante tan distinguidos participantes.

Estaré subiendo semanalmente los materiales de cada módulo.

Espero poder ser de apoyo total a cada uno de ustedes.

Su servidor,

Juan Valera

El proyecto STEM-PBL ha sido una experiencia educativa enriquecedora, la cual hemos ido disenando en el transcurso de esta certificacion. Es una oportunidad profesional educativa de gran calidad que nos ha ayudado como maestros de salon de clases hacer proceso de ensenanza-aprendizaje diferente y significativo a las vidas de los estudiantes.