They Called The Trade Wars & China's Housing Crash | Nikhil Kamath | WTF is Finance Ep 4 - WTF is Finance | Lyssna här

I sat down with two economists in China, Matthew Klein, who co-wrote the book on why trade wars are really class wars, and Ning Zhu, the professor who predicted China's housing collapse years before it happened and asked them everything I've never had answers to: what actually happens if trade surpluses and deficits continue for decades, why China consumes so much less of what it produces than India does, why the world keeps parking trillions in American debt, and whether de-dollarization is a real shift or just a story we like telling ourselves. Ning made the case that prolonged imbalances have historically been settled by war, Matthew argued that Korea's most traumatic financial moment not its miracle is what turned it into a surplus nation, and both agreed on the one thing every real estate developer in India refuses to believe: land prices do fall, and the moment everyone's convinced they can't is exactly when they do.

Timestamp

00:00 Introduction

06:29 Why trade surpluses and deficits can persist for decades

11:42 What actually signals a healthy economy, and Korea's shift from deficits to surpluses

17:46 Whether tariffs can correct an undervalued currency

23:12 Why the world keeps funding American debt so cheaply

29:49 Where American long-term yields go from here

35:36 Whether dedollarisation is actually happening

41:35 Why unsustainable arrangements outlast the arguments against them

46:37 How China's state guaranteed its housing bubble

52:25 Building an economy from scratch: efficiency against fairness

Zhu Ning- Deputy Dean and Professor of Finance, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance