The global goods surplus (using customs data) is almost two times its pre-pandemic level and rising -- driven by the huge increase in the surplus of East Asia. 1/ many

The same is true of the big manufacturing powers -- note that the entire European customs surplus now comes from Germany and Ireland, the rest of the EU runs a decent sized deficit 2/

It should be much better known that the EU's customs surplus disappears without Ireland (or w/o pharma, which is driven by tax ... ) (i.e. Ireland's success at attracting US pharma's tax schemes has masked the impact of the China shock) 3/

The reason why I don't understand the logic of the trade war with Canada 4/

And a chart showing why even the biggest EMs cannot be the counterpart of China's $300b a quarter surplus 5/

Bottom line: China and big currency managers in Asia (Taiwan, Singapore, Korea) account for the lion's share of the global goods surplus these days (with the US and the UK and their fiscal deficit fueled import deficits on the other side) 6/6