·
- China began investing heavily in the U.S. real-estate market a few years ago after Beijing loosened restrictions on foreign investment. Some Chinese investors were attracted to the stable returns in the U.S. property market and saw it as a way to diversify their holdings.
Yet some Chinese buyers seemed more interested in scooping up trophy properties that their new owners felt brought prestige, political clout and helped promote their brands for global expansion, analysts said. And while Chinese buyers never represented more than a fraction of the activity in any major U.S. city, the big checks they wrote helped push values higher in certain segments of the market.
“Without that big push from Chinese investors, the market doesn’t have that rocket-propelling fuel to it,” said Mr. Margon.
blackbootz · 200 days ago · link ·
I wonder how much of that rocket fuel was splashed on California. Might be a silly question, but is there anything positive to Trump’s trade war with China? I don’t want to countenance the idea that Trump’s protectionism and phony concern over negative trade balances might actually be a net positive (as if we could measure such a thing); that it may be forcing China to... behave in a manner more in line with our interests? I’m about to take a class on international trade and monetary theory. I wonder if I’ll be able to answer this question myself in 4 months. RemindMe!
–
Allllll up and down the pacific rim, dawg. Much of LA you couldn't buy a house for less than $500k because a Chinese REIT was there with cash. Apparently over $500k and you're in a new finance regime and all of a sudden you're bargaining against humans again. Trump's trade war with China is, indeed, forcing some behavioral changes in the Chinese marketplace. Nothing is without externalities, though. I mean, all the libs hated the shit out of the TPP because it basically made foreign citizens subject to corporate penalties in countries they didn't live in. But it was also the "contain the shit out of China" act. Gavekal called this whole Huawei dustup "this century's Suez crisis" because a thousand years ago it was roads, a hundred years ago it was ships and now empire belongs to whoever controls the data. Curious as to your opinions on the other side of the class. I'm armchair at best.The bottom line is this: if the symbol of British domination was the steamship, and the symbol of American strength was the Boeing 747, it seems increasingly clear that the question of the future will be whether tomorrow’s telecom switches and routers are produced by Huawei or Cisco. In that regard, the US attempts to take down Huawei and ZTE can be seen as the existing empire’s attempt to prevent the ascent of a new imperial power.