Joseph Belbruno Blog

  Why Factories Will Keep Looking for Alternatives to China A trade truce between the United States and China has calmed nerves, but it won’t stop the broader movement of companies to countries like Vietnam. Listen to this article · 7:37 min  Learn more 36 Nov. 12, 2025 When President Trump started a trade war with China during his first term, Simon Lichtenberg decided to ride it out. He owned factories making leather sofas in China since the 1990s and figured the two sides would resolve the dispute. He doesn’t think that anymore. Mr. Lichtenberg invested around $20 million to move his factory for American clients to Vietnam this year. Now, not even the cease-fire Mr. Trump has reached with China has changed his outlook that deep-seated animosity between the countries has altered the economics of his business. China’s scale and abundant labor turned it into a factory juggernaut for decades, placing it firmly at the heart of the global economy. But Mr. Trump is tearing down the...

In this interesting piece, Martin Wolf sets up a contrast between small competing dynamic economies (in Europe) and large integrated ones (US, China, Russia), suggesting that small and fragmented economies cannot match the large integrated ones despite their greater dynamism. This is an erroneous classifcation of capitalist development. Both Britain and the US show that integrates nation-state economies can become industrially hegemonic depending on the size of the global industrial economy at the time (Britain's in the Industrial Revolution, the US in post WW2) and on the state of their industrial capitalist governance. Yes. Size does matter. And so does governance. As it stands, China's dictatorship is headed toward autarkic implosion and decay.   Can Europe be fragmented and still prosper? What once made its sovereign states powerful and rich could now be a barrier to their remaining so Martin Wolf martin.wolf@ft.com · 12 Nov 2025 What have the Romans ever done for us? In Mo...

As always (Minsky), regulators (beholden to the powers that be) shut the stable doors once the horse has bolted!  Warnings from the private credit wobble Investors and regulators should sharpen scrutiny of risky lending practices 12 Nov 2025 The booming private credit sector is inspiring a rich lexicon of alarm. For some time, market watchers have described the alternative asset class — which has grown to around $3tn globally — as a “ticking time bomb.” Recent turbulence has added to the colourful language. After the collapse in September of US car-parts maker First Brands and auto-lender Tricolor Holdings, which had both taken loans from nonbank financial institutions, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warned that “when you see one cockroach, there are probably more.” Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, said last month the bankruptcies could be a “canary in the coal mine”. Analysts are taking note. To extend the roach analogy, they are asking whether recent problems in privat...

  The free fall of German industry Europe’s largest economy is struggling to pull out of a slump exacerbated by Trump’s trade policies and China’s growing competitiveness. Economists are suggesting radical steps to save what is left. By Olaf Storbeck, Sebastien Ash and Florian Müller · 12 Nov 2025 In the proud heartland of German engineering expertise, prosperity can no longer be taken for granted. Last month, laser and machine tool maker Trumpf, an emblem of the country’s globally successful family firms known as the “Mittelstand”, swung to its first loss since the global financial crisis. Within 24 hours, its home town of Ditzingen, in the wealthy southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, announced it was stepping up austerity measures. Local business tax, a key source of income, has cratered by 80 per cent since 2023, pushing the budget deep into the red for years to come. Ditzingen’s city treasurer Patrick Maier tells the Financial Times that while he was expecting a hit, “I hon...