Catching up
/A few things that caught my eye while I was gone:
The African swine flu is out of control, with the number of infected provinces and cities now up to 42. The government has culled 1.7m pigs. A few things here:
This will be almost impossible to stop unless the government takes it seriously, including paying farmers much more for the culled pigs. This is just a fact of life. The farmers are being rational - they need money. And the meat is safe to eat (at least as far I have read). So raise the prices, and more farmers will comply. The flu will continue to spread unless the farmers are on the side of the government.
Soy bean prices are going to continue to fall, most likely. China continues to have a big problem, and now Vietnam is worsening. There is always a chance that it spreads to other parts of the globe.
Farming is tough. Weather is fickle. Disease can rip through all of your crops/stocks. Yet, we have seen food prices fall over the long term. This is because of efficiencies, better crops, scale, consolidation, etc. These trends are not going to stop. This will likely mean a further shift from agricultural work to factory work in Vietnam. Also, we will likely see bigger consolidation of plots.
Poor pigs. I believe that if this lasts for a long time, consumption patterns will change away from pork. Hopefully to chicken or vegetable-based protein. But also probably beef (which is worse than the others for the environment).
Saigon really needs to clean up its waterways. This is just a statement after reading this horror story. What a mess. My initial take is that people are disgusting (fitting take for someone that is a misanthrope).
But I also have a prior that generally people don’t like to see their environment defiled, and if it weren’t too difficult they would find an alternative. The system is the problem, not the people. So the government needs to make it easier for trash to be deposited. By carrots (maybe paying for recycling, better trash places, etc), and sticks (fines, arrests for the most egregious).
This is a public health issue but also a quality of life issue. People want to live in a nice environment. They can get used to crap, but they won’t ever like it.
Coal is still doing very well in Vietnam. This is a gigantic mistake in my view. It would be much better to put up solar or wind, for clean air reasons, for cost reasons, and for long term energy independence reasons.
On that last point: Right now, the government imports something like 20 million tons of coal. This is set to grow.
Markey said imports are forecast to peak at 80 million to 110 million tons between 2030 and 2040, against current demand of 63 million tons. [Around 40 million tons are produced internally, based on these figures.]
This will cost the country a fair amount of money. Depending on the type of coal needed, it could cost around $50 per ton, so that would be $5bn or so a year. That’s not chump change (although it will be versus a much bigger GDP, so probably won’t matter that much).
The US will not brand Vietnam a currency manipulator. The Vietnamese government “sent over some new data” to forestall the government from tagging Vietnam as a currency manipulator. Seems like both sides probably wanted to make sure this didn’t happen, and they were able to conjure up some “data” that could be used as a pretext to dismiss the case.
This is good for Vietnam. Probably fine for the US. But doesn’t really speak to a hard line on trade, like Trump promised. But there are other trade issues on which the US needs support, and it probably doesn’t make sense to piss off Vietnam right now.
*I accidentally dated this as May 25, 2019. It was posted May 28.