Projrect Syndicate, Apr 10, 2025
US President Donald Trump says he wants to preserve the dollar's international role as a reserve and payment currency. If that's true, the history of pound sterling suggests he should be promoting financial stability, limiting the use of tariffs, and strengthening America's geopolitical alliances.
What were Chinese soldiers doing in Ukraine?
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, April 9, 2025
On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a video and a statement on the social media platform X saying that Ukraine had arrested two Chinese nationals who, he said, were fighting on behalf of Russia in the Donetsk region. In the video, one soldier describes, while handcuffed and speaking in Chinese, what appears to have been a military operation moments before his capture.
China’s deployment of troops in Ukraine would be a major development in the war, bringing a third nuclear power directly involved on the side of Russia after North Korea started sending troops in October.
Zelensky said the soldiers were identified from documents, bank cards, and other personal information retrieved during their capture. A Ukraine army spokesperson confirmed to the Bulletin that the captured Chinese citizens were being held by the security service of Ukraine (SBU) but declined to elaborate, citing ongoing investigative and operational activity. SBU did not respond to our request for comment.
The president instructed Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha to “immediately contact Beijing and clarify how China intends to respond to this.” By Wednesday afternoon, Beijing had still not confirmed the arrest, although a spokesperson of China’s Foreign Ministry said that “China is verifying information with the Ukrainian side,” referring to the identity and the whereabouts of the two Chinese soldiers captured in Ukraine.
“Let me stress that the Chinese government always asks Chinese nationals to stay away from areas of armed conflict, avoid any form of involvement in armed conflict, and in particular avoid participation in any party’s military operations,” the spokesperson added. This suggests that Beijing may try to claim the two Chinese individuals entered the war zone on their own initiative to support Russia, therefore not at China’s request.
It is still unknown whether the two Chinese soldiers captured in Ukraine were mercenaries, were part of a Chinese military unit, or belonged to China’s intelligence services. It is also unclear what their actions in Ukraine were before being captured, how many Chinese soldiers have been fighting in Ukraine, or when and how they arrived.
The Trump administration first reacted to the arrest late Tuesday during a press briefing, during which State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce qualified the presence of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine as “disturbing.”
“China is a major enabler of Russia in the war in Ukraine,” Bruce said. She added that “China provides nearly 80 percent of the dual-use items Russia needs to sustain the war,” referring to the goods and technology that can be used for both civilian and military purposes. Citing President Trump, Bruce said that the “continued cooperation between these two nuclear powers [Russia and China] will only further contribute to global instability and make the United States and other countries less safe, less secure, and less prosperous.”
Officially, China does not support Russia’s war effort so as not to upend its diplomatic and trade relations with the United States and Europe. But behind the scenes, China has become a major supplier of dual-use components to Russia. According to Carnegie China expert Nathaniel Sher, in 2023 China covered approximately 90 percent of Russia’s imports of goods placed on the Group of Seven’s high-priority export control list as possibly fueling Russia’s weapons programs. This level of support is up from 32 percent before the war.
Since the beginning of the war, Ukraine’s allies have resisted sending troops to Ukraine, fearing the risk of escalation with Russia and a possible military confrontation with NATO members. That view started to shift in recent weeks. After the United States temporarily lifted its intelligence sharing with and military assistance for Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron said a coalition of European countries led by France and the United Kingdom was considering sending troops to provide security guarantees for Ukraine after an eventual ceasefire, adding that this deployment would not need Russia’s approval.
Since arriving in office in January, President Donald Trump has vowed to bring the war in Ukraine to an end by brokering a ceasefire or peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin. But on March 30, following a visit to President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago golf resort, Finnish President Alexander Stubb told reporters that Trump was “losing patience with Vladimir Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire.” Stubb reportedly suggested that Trump set a deadline of April 20, after which Putin would be required to comply with a full ceasefire.
The arrest of Chinese soldiers in Ukraine on Tuesday may further complicate negotiations with Putin as it could bring a new major party into the conflict.
Trump's Psychological Vulnerability
Trump has an obvious weakness that makes America weak. He places the American economy at risk for the sake of a personal foible, a visible vulnerability.
All his adult life, Trump has been ripping people off. That is his modus operandi. Rather than a conscience, he has the habit of displacement. It is not that he is ripping people off. Everyone else is ripping him off.
As he has aged this has grown into an vulnerability. He actually seems to believe that everyone is ripping him off. He makes no distinction between himself and the government. And he has no grasp of how any significant policy actually works. This means that anyone who has access to him and understands his vulnerability can generate a self-destructive American policy.
An easy example of this, before the tariffs, was Ukraine. Somewhere Trump got the idea that Ukraine was ripping off the United States. And once the idea was in his head, he was its slave. He kept repeating that the Ukraine owed the United States $350 billion.
This made no sense. The assistance in question was aid, not a loan. The value of the aid was about a third of what Trump claimed. Most of the military aid came in the form of spending inside the United States. And of course the Ukrainians have paid. They have fulfilled the entire NATO mission by themselves in holding off a Russian attack. They have suffered enormous losses of all kinds. And they have shared intelligence and innovations with the United States. But none of that matters to Trump. Once he is told that he is being ripped off, he is helpless, and others must suffer.
We don't know now, though it is not hard to guess, who told Trump that Ukraine was ripping him off. The Russians have a keen sense of psychological vulnerabilities, and they have been paying close attention to Trump for a long time.
Trump also cites the made-up number of $350 billion to justify tariffs. He claims that Europeans, curiously, somehow "owe" the United States that exact same amount. Trump believes that if Americans buy more from another country than residents of that country buy from us, that is a loss, that he personally is somehow being ripped off. And so when the United States formulated tariffs on the whole world last week, the operating principle was that all trade deficits -- cases where we buy more than we sell -- should be eliminated.
This is nonsensical. There is no state of nature where countries buy and sell the exact same amount from one another.
Imagine a party where people are freely talking to each other. Then someone jumps up on a table and insists that in every conversation each speaker should use the exact same number of words as the person with whom he or she is in dialogue. What would happen then? Every conversation would grind to a halt, because an artificial planned equality of words is not how conversations work. An artificial planned equality of the value of imports and exports is, by the same token, not how trade works.
There is a much injustice in international trade. And there is much to be said for a thoughtful trade policy that protects or encourages certain industries. Manufacturing is of inherent value. But none of this will arise from the hurt feelings of an oligarchical president.
Because Trump's policy is based on personal vulnerability, it is erratic. If someone makes him feel more vulnerable than he was already, he will stop. He will not, for example, impose tariffs on Russia, because he is afraid of Russia. On the other hand, if someone convinces him that he has won, then he will also reduce the tariffs, as has just happened. If he no longer feels that he is being ripped off, then he yields. Until the moment when his feelings change.
To a person which such a obvious vulnerability, everything seems out of control. And so control is the only answer. Everyone is acting to rip me off. And so I must establish control by calling them all out, and making them deal with me from a position of weakness and ridicule. And so now the United States -- so goes the theory - will now negotiate individually with every single country of the world. We have broken agreements with many of them, and now we will sign new agreements, which will probably be worse: we lack time now, and patience, and focus. And we can never get back the trust of our closest trade partners.
The same is true in domestic policy. By establishing the tariffs, Trump thinks that he is creating leverage for himself against American companies. They will all have to come to him personally to seek the "carve-out," the exception, that will allow them to continue to trade in world markets and function as they had before. And so Trump can enjoy feeling less vulnerable as he tries to bully companies. But this amounts to central planning, and of a particularly irrational sort: one that depends upon one man's feelings. Investing inside the United States no longer means what it once did. And this will not quickly change.
We all have our foibles, our whims, our vulnerabilities. But when one person has unchecked power, irrationality becomes unchecked. Donald Trump thinks that everyone is always ripping him off. If he were the president in a normal situation, this would be a minor problem. But in a situation in which he has gotten away with an attempted coup, in which the Supreme Court has told him he is immune from prosecution, in which members of his own party rarely challenge him, in which Congress no longer sees the need to pass laws, and so on, in which too much of the media normalizes him, Trump's vulnerability can bring about the destruction of the country.
We have thousands of years of political theory and indeed great literature to instruct us on this point: too much power brings out the worst in people -- especially among the worst of people. As the founders understood, the purpose of the rule of law, of checks and balances, of regular elections, is to prevent precisely such a situation. Allowing our republic to be compromised has many costs, for example to our rights, and to our dignity. But it also has costs in a very basic economic sense. When you elevate the mad king, you elevate the madness.
Global Trade and Geopolitics
March 2025
https://www.imf.org/-/media/Files/Publications/Fandd/Article/2025/03/br-van-heuvelen.ashx
A history of the WTO’s predecessor sheds light on contemporary trade tensions
INDUSTRIAL POLICY, NATIONAL SECURITY, AND THE PERILOUS PLIGHT OF THE WTO
Petros C. Mavroidis
Oxford University Press
New York, NY, 2025, 355 pp., $160
Industrial policy in the name of national security is surging, and it’s stretching the world trading system to the breaking point, according to Petros Mavroidis, a professor at Columbia Law School. His latest book, Industrial Policy, National Security, and the Perilous Plight of the WTO, should be required reading for trade experts and others trying to make sense of trade policy today. It tells the history of the current system, offers deep knowledge of World Trade Organization (WTO) legal structures and case law, and presents a sweeping account of how global trade and geopolitics interact.
Mavroidis, who worked in the WTO legal affairs division from 1992 to 1995 and has been a legal advisor to the organization since 1996, uses the example of semiconductors to illustrate the rise of global value chains and the growing entanglement of industrial and national security policies. The semiconductor industry, with its dual-use military and civilian technologies, has benefited from substantial government intervention. It’s where geopolitics and global value chains collide.
The book reminds us that many contemporary challenges are explained through the history of the 1947 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which preceded the launch of the WTO in 1995. Weak subsidy rules and the international system’s inability to impose discipline are arguably at the core of some of the most contentious trade disputes today. The origins can be traced to the US view of the world at the time the agreement was drafted, Mavroidis argues.
US President Franklin Roosevelt, emboldened by New Deal policies and their accompanying subsidies, turned his attention to building a liberal international order that aimed to avoid “dissonance between domestic planning and international obligations.” Like the United States, the 22 other founding members of the tariffs and trade agreement were reluctant to limit their use of subsidies. They were market economies, but they relied on considerable state intervention to rebuild their societies after World War II.
The GATT’s framers failed to plan for a world that frequently invokes the national security exception. After all, the agreement was a “relational contract among like-minded players,” Mavroidis explains, and use of the provision was sparing. Since its beginning, of course, the agreement has evolved into the 166-member WTO, which represents over 98 percent of international trade and a spectrum of geopolitical and strategic interests. In recent years, use of this provision has become more common, and its use and abuse have led to “cosmic uncertainty” about the strength of the system.
The author argues, moreover, that the WTO was predicated on the misguided belief that we had already reached “the end of history,” that liberal democracy was inevitable, and that “China was on an irrevocable path toward becoming a market economy.” This had far-reaching implications for China’s WTO accession and amounted to missed opportunities to impose more controls on subsidies and state-owned enterprises.
The challenges confronting the multilateral trading system are immense, and Mavroidis does not purport to solve all problems. Instead he argues that the WTO is worth saving and proposes reforms to improve cooperation at least to “guarantee that there is a boat to navigate” when the environment is more conducive to change. This pragmatism is refreshing, but it is also a sobering reflection on where we are today.
ELIZABETH VAN HEUVELEN is a senior economist in the IMF’s Strategy, Policy, and Review Department.
... “When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with,” U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted in 2018, “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” This week, when the Trump administration imposed tariffs of more than 100 percent on U.S. imports from China, setting off a new and even more dangerous trade war, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a similar justification: “I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese escalation, because they’re playing with a pair of twos. What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.”...
...The Trump administration is embarking on an economic equivalent of the Vietnam War—a war of choice that will soon result in a quagmire, undermining faith at home and abroad in both the trustworthiness and the competence of the United States—and we all know how that turned out...
Trade Wars Are Easy to Lose
Beijing Has Escalation Dominance in the U.S.-China Tariff Fight
Foreign Affairs, April 9, 2025
ADAM S. POSEN is President of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with,” U.S. President Donald Trump famously tweeted in 2018, “trade wars are good, and easy to win.” This week, when the Trump administration imposed tariffs of more than 100 percent on U.S. imports from China, setting off a new and even more dangerous trade war, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a similar justification: “I think it was a big mistake, this Chinese escalation, because they’re playing with a pair of twos. What do we lose by the Chinese raising tariffs on us? We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us, so that is a losing hand for them.”
In short, the Trump administration believes it has what game theorists call escalation dominance over China and any other economy with which it has a bilateral trade deficit. Escalation dominance, in the words of a report by the RAND Corporation, means that “a combatant has the ability to escalate a conflict in ways that will be disadvantageous or costly to the adversary while the adversary cannot do the same in return.” If the administration’s logic is correct, then China, Canada, and any other country that retaliates against U.S. tariffs is indeed playing a losing hand.
But this logic is wrong: it is China that has escalation dominance in this trade war. The United States gets vital goods from China that cannot be replaced any time soon or made at home at anything less than prohibitive cost. Reducing such dependence on China may be a reason for action, but fighting the current war before doing so is a recipe for almost certain defeat, at enormous cost. Or to put it in Bessent’s terms: Washington, not Beijing, is betting all in on a losing hand.
SHOW YOUR HAND
The administration’s claims are off base on two counts. For one thing, both sides get hurt in a trade war, because both lose access to things their economies want and need and that their people and companies are willing to pay for. Like launching an actual war, a trade war is an act of destruction that puts the attacker’s own forces and home front at risk, as well: if the defending side did not believe it could retaliate in a way that would harm the attacker, it would surrender.
Bessent’s poker analogy is misleading because poker is a zero-sum game: I win only if you lose; you win only if I lose. Trade, by contrast, is positive-sum: in most situations, the better you do, the better I do, and vice versa. In poker, you get nothing back for what you put in the pot unless you win; in trade, you get it back immediately, in the form of the goods and services you buy.
The Trump administration believes that the more you import, the less you have at stake—that because the United States has a trade deficit with China, importing more Chinese goods and services than China does U.S. goods and services, it is less vulnerable. This is factually wrong, not a matter of opinion. Blocking trade reduces a nation’s real income and purchasing power; countries export in order to earn the money to buy things they do not have or are too expensive to make at home.
What’s more, even if you focus solely on the bilateral trade balance, as the Trump administration does, it bodes poorly for the United States in a trade war with China. In 2024, U.S. exports of goods and services to China were $199.2 billion, and imports from China were $462.5 billion, resulting in a trade deficit of $263.3 billion. To the degree that the bilateral trade balance predicts which side will “win” in a trade war, the advantage lies with the surplus economy, not the deficit one. China, the surplus country, is giving up sales, which is solely money; the United States, the deficit country, is giving up goods and services it does not produce competitively or at all at home. Money is fungible: if you lose income, you can cut back spending, find sales elsewhere, spread the burden across the country, or draw down savings (say, by doing fiscal stimulus). China, like most countries with overall trade surpluses, saves more than it invests—meaning that it, in a sense, has too much savings. The adjustment would be relatively easy. There would be no critical shortages, and it could replace much of what it normally sold to the United States with sales domestically or to others.
Countries with overall trade deficits, like the United States, spend more than they save. In trade wars, they give up or reduce the supply of things they need (since the tariffs make them cost more), and these are not nearly as fungible or easily substituted for as money. Consequently, the impact is felt in specific industries, locations, or households that face shortages, sometimes of necessary items, some of whichare irreplaceable in the short term. Deficit countries also import capital—which makes the United States more vulnerable to shifts in sentiment about the reliability of its government and about its attractiveness as a place to do business. When the Trump administration makes capricious decisions to impose an enormous tax increase and great uncertainty on manufacturers’ supply chains, the result will be reduced investment into the United States, raising interest rates on its debt.
OF DEFICITS AND DOMINANCE
In short, the U.S. economy will suffer enormously in a large-scale trade war with China, which the current levels of Trump-imposed tariffs, at more than 100 percent, surely constitute if left in place. In fact, the U.S. economy will suffer more than the Chinese economy will, and the suffering will only increase if the United States escalates. The Trump administration may think it’s acting tough, but it’s in fact putting the U.S. economy at the mercy of Chinese escalation.
The United States will face shortages of critical inputs ranging from basic ingredients of most pharmaceuticals to inexpensive semiconductors used in cars and home appliances to critical minerals for industrial processes including weapons production. The supply shock from drastically reducing or zeroing out imports from China, as Trump purports to want to achieve, would mean stagflation, the macroeconomic nightmare seen in the 1970s and during the COVID pandemic, when the economy shrank and inflation rose simultaneously. In such a situation, which may be closer at hand than many think, the Federal Reserve and fiscal policymakers are left with only terrible options and little chance of staving off unemployment except by further raising inflation.
When it comes to real war, if you have reason to be afraid of being invaded, it would be suicidal to provoke your adversary before you’ve armed yourself. That is essentially what Trump’s economic attack risks: given that the U.S. economy is entirely dependent on Chinese sources for vital goods (pharmaceutical stocks, cheap electronic chips, critical minerals), it is wildly reckless not to ensure alternate suppliers or adequate domestic production before cutting off trade. By doing it the other way around, the administration is inviting exactly the kind of damage it says it wants to prevent.
This could all be intended as just a negotiating tactic, Trump’s and Bessent’s repeated statements and actions notwithstanding. But even on those terms, the strategy will do more harm than good. As I warned in Foreign Affairs last October, the fundamental problem with Trump’s economic approach is that it would need to carry out enough self-harming threats to be credible, which means that markets and households would expect ongoing uncertainty. Americans and foreigners alike would invest less rather than more in the U.S. economy, and they would no longer trust the U.S. government to live up to any deal, making a negotiated settlement or agreement to deescalate difficult to achieve. As a result, U.S. productive capacity would decline rather than improve, which would only increase the leverage that China and others have over the United States.
The Trump administration is embarking on an economic equivalent of the Vietnam War—a war of choice that will soon result in a quagmire, undermining faith at home and abroad in both the trustworthiness and the competence of the United States—and we all know how that turned out.
O STF continua abusando de nossa paciência:
... Os discursos do Presidente Trump defendendo a indústria local, o emprego local e as tarifas comerciais parecem saídos dos livros de Celso Furtado e Raul Prebisch, ou dos manuais da Cepal....
...Como disse o astrônomo Carl Sagan, ao se referir à escala do tempo, um evento inimaginável em uma centena de anos talvez seja inevitável em um milhão de anos…
OPINIÃO. EUA vs. China: o fim do ‘New Bretton Woods’?
A fúria tarifária do governo Trump trouxe de volta a guerra comercial entre China e EUA, mas com outro nível de beligerância e efeitos ainda mais intensos para a economia global.
Estes eventos nos levam a uma reflexão acerca do que será o novo modelo de funcionamento do sistema financeiro global. Quem está há mais tempo no mercado se lembrará que, entre 2004 e 2006, uma discussão interessante emergiu junto a economistas e mesas de operação, provocada por um artigo dos economistas Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau e Peter Graber.
Eles argumentavam que o sistema financeiro global funcionava, desde 2000, de forma semelhante ao antigo sistema Bretton Woods (1944-1971), mas com uma nova configuração – e por isso essa teoria ficou conhecida como “The New Bretton Woods”.
O argumento principal era de que o mundo novamente se via dividido entre centro (os EUA) e periferia (os países exportadores da Ásia, principalmente a China).
O centro era emissor de moeda (dólar), consumia muito e importava muitos bens, incorrendo em vultosos e crescentes déficits comerciais.
A periferia (essencialmente a China), era um grande e eficiente produtor de bens, exportava muito e, portanto, incorria em superávits comerciais crescentes, o que gerava acumulação de reservas em dólares. Parte relevante dessas reservas, por sua vez, era aplicada em títulos do Tesouro americano e, desse modo, ajudavam a financiar os crescentes déficits comercial e fiscal daquele país, mantendo o dólar forte.
Além disso, essas economias da periferia se destacavam por gerenciar ativamente suas taxas de câmbio, de modo a mantê-las sempre depreciadas, protegendo suas exportações.
Esse sistema gerava um benefício mútuo: crescimento econômico rápido e intenso na China, e financiamento barato nos EUA, sustentando níveis elevados de consumo e dispêndio.
Esse equilíbrio, por óbvio, era algo instável e de sustentabilidade limitada, mas que poderia durar muitos anos enquanto continuasse a gerar vantagens mútuas para os dois lados. Seu fim provavelmente só ocorreria na hipótese dos déficits americanos se tornarem gigantes e não financiáveis, ou se os países da periferia deixassem de acumular dólares, ou provavelmente uma combinação das duas coisas.
Para ilustrar com dados econômicos, a média do superávit comercial da China vs EUA desde 2006 é de aproximadamente US$ 320 bilhões/ano, totalizando US$ 5,8 trilhões de 2006 a 2024. As reservas cambiais da China saltaram de US$ 1 trilhão em 2006 para US$ 3,2 trilhões em 2024, sendo que estimativas do FMI apontam que de 58% a 60% desse total estão diretamente na moeda americana (dólares).
As compras de Treasuries americanos pelos chineses também cresceram substancialmente nesse período: o estoque da China saiu de pouco mais de US$ 60 bilhões em 2001 para mais de US$ 1 trilhão em 2020, e encerrou 2024 em US$ 760 bilhões.
Assim, o que o tarifaço do governo Trump provavelmente inaugura é o início do fim desse sistema de interdependência mútua de EUA e China. Os déficits americanos podem ter chegado a um patamar que coloca em xeque o papel do dólar como moeda global de reserva e, portanto, poderia comprometer a sustentabilidade do equilíbrio desse sistema. Assim, o que o tarifaço faz é colocar um fim nessa dinâmica insustentável do “New Bretton Woods” e trazer à tona a discussão sobre para qual modelo a economia global irá migrar.
Do ponto de vista do Brasil, minha avaliação é de que os efeitos podem ser positivos, principalmente para o setor exportador agro, visto que o conflito abre novas oportunidades de comércio com a própria China, com os EUA, e com outros países também afetados pela mudança da política comercial americana.
Se o efeito final de tudo isso for um mundo com menos barreiras tarifárias e mais livre do ponto de vista comercial, provavelmente teremos que revisitar os ensinamentos de David Ricardo acerca das vantagens comparativas de cada país, e sobre como a eficiência produtiva de cada player se reflete na sua competitividade, nua e crua, no mercado global.
Acredito que ainda estamos muito longe desse cenário, mas, no limite, isso é um dos cenários possíveis a médio/longo prazo.
Não obstante, o que emerge até o momento, de forma bastante inimaginável, inusitada e curiosa, é ver o governo americano, presidido pelo Partido Republicano, utilizar medidas que lembram muito a esquerda latino-americana dos anos 1970, que ficou notabilizada pela defesa do modelo de substituição de importações como estratégia de desenvolvimento econômico. Deu no que deu.
Os discursos do Presidente Trump defendendo a indústria local, o emprego local e as tarifas comerciais parecem saídos dos livros de Celso Furtado e Raul Prebisch, ou dos manuais da Cepal.
Como disse o astrônomo Carl Sagan, ao se referir à escala do tempo, um evento inimaginável em uma centena de anos talvez seja inevitável em um milhão de anos…
'A mente nova do imperador'
Nobel de Física explora a relação entre a mecânica quântica e a consciência humana,
questionando os limites da inteligência artificial
Os avanços tecnológicos têm levado a inteligência artificial a novos patamares, incluindo as artes visuais e a escrita criativa. Porém, Sir Roger Penrose tem uma visão diferente sobre o assunto. Ele acredita que as máquinas não podem reproduzir todas as funções da mente humana, contrariando essa tendência. Em A mente nova do imperador: Sobre computadores, mentes e as leis da física, best-seller que chega aos leitores brasileiros pelas mãos da Editora Unesp, o Nobel de Física apresenta sua fascinante linha de raciocínio sobre questões fundamentais, como o significado de pensar e sentir, o que é a consciência e se é possível explicar a mente humana por meio das leis da física. Ele usa princípios básicos da física, da cosmologia, da matemática e da filosofia para tentar responder essas perguntas.
“Muitos matemáticos e físicos de grande estatura acham complexo, se não impossível, escrever um livro que leigos possam entender”, anota, no prefácio, Martin Gardner. “Até este ano poderíamos supor que Roger Penrose, um dos físicos matemáticos com maior conhecimento e criatividade do mundo, pertencia a esse grupo. Aqueles de nós que havíamos lido seus artigos não técnicos e suas notas de aula sabíamos que não era esse o caso. Ainda assim, foi uma grata surpresa ver que Penrose havia dedicado um tempo em meio de seus afazeres para produzir um livro maravilhoso para o leitor leigo informado. É um livro que eu acredito que se tornará um clássico. Ainda que os capítulos escritos por Penrose percorram searas vastas, indo desde a teoria da relatividade à mecânica quântica e à cosmologia, suas preocupações centrais são com o que os filósofos chamam de ‘problema mente-corpo’.”
Ele explica conceitos complexos como máquinas de Turing, mecânica quântica, sistemas formais, espaços de fase, buracos negros, buracos brancos, radiação de Hawking, entre outros. Na obra, o autor defende que Albert Einstein estava certo em sua suspeita de que a mecânica quântica estava incompleta e que o mistério da consciência está no meio-termo entre a física quântica e a física clássica. E, apesar da complexidade dos temas, o autor constrói um arcabouço conceitual acessível e fornece o aparato necessário para que o leitor possa compreender o debate acerca dos limites entre o “pensar” natural e o artificial.
“O livro escrito por Penrose é a investida mais poderosa já escrita contra a IA forte. Objeções têm sido levantadas nos últimos séculos contra a afirmação reducionista de que a mente é uma máquina operada pelas leis conhecidas da física, mas a ofensiva de Penrose é mais persuasiva, pois ela bebe de fontes de informação que não estavam previamente disponíveis para os objetores. O livro revela que Penrose é mais que um físico matemático. Ele também é um filósofo de primeira linha, sem medo de tratar de problemas que os filósofos contemporâneos tendem a considerar sem significado”, resume Garnder. A mente nova do imperador é uma leitura obrigatória para aqueles que buscam respostas sobre o mistério da consciência e desejam participar desse importante debate.
'A fábula das abelhas', de Bernard Mandeville
Clássico de Bernard Mandeville
A seção Clássicos do Catálogo desta semana destaca a obra de Bernard Mandeville: A fábula das abelhas: ou ou vícios privados, benefícios públicos. A obra da sátira britânica do século XVIII desencadeou uma grande controvérsia social ao rejeitar uma visão positiva da natureza humana e argumentar pela necessidade do vício como fundamento de uma economia capitalista emergente.
O filósofo, médico, economista, político e satirista, Bernard de Mandeville nasceu em Rotterdam, Países Baixos, passou a maior parte de sua vida na Inglaterra e escreveu quase todos os seus trabalhos em inglês. Sua obra magna, A fábula das abelhas, causou forte impacto no século XVIII, suscitando ataques e elogios, e contribuiu fortemente para lançar as bases da chamada ciência da natureza humana.
Com tradução de Bruno Costa Simões, o texto de Mandeville causou escândalo na época e recobre uma contribuição decisiva ao pensamento das Luzes, segundo Pedro Paulo Pimenta, que assina as orelhas da obra. Em um tom de fábula, o autor passeia pela questão dos defeitos e corrupções apontados em diversas profissões para, a seguir, examinar de que forma esses “vícios, de cada pessoa em particular, por uma hábil destreza, são postos a serviço da grandiosidade e da felicidade mundana de todos”.
“[O]s que examinam a natureza do homem, dispensando a arte e a educação, podem observar que aquilo que o torna um animal sociável consiste não no seu desejo de companhia, bondade, piedade, afabilidade e outras encantos de bela aparência, mas sim no fato de que as suas qualidades mais vis e odiosas são as aptidões mais necessárias para ajustá-lo nas maiores e, conforme anda o mundo, nas mais felizes e prósperas sociedades”, escreve Mandeville.
Segundo Pedro Paulo Pimenta, a leitura de A fábula das abelhas, hoje mais pertinente do que nunca, pode servir, entre outras coisas, para atenuar nossa ingenuidade em relação a valores que a nossa época costuma tomar como definitivos, mas que, como todos os valores, são impostos por quem tem interesse e força para torná-los correntes.
A ascensão internacional da China e suas novas estratégias de inserção global têm redesenhado as estruturas da ordem mundial — e seus impactos já são sentidos no Brasil e em toda a América Latina. No dia 16 de abril, às 10h (BRT), o Pesquisador da Harvard University e Professor da UFF, Vitelio Brustolin, abordará o tema “A Nova Geopolítica da China e seus Reflexos no Brasil e no Mundo”, analisando como as mudanças no cenário internacional — como a rivalidade sino-americana, os rearranjos produtivos e as disputas tecnológicas — afetam diretamente a política externa e a economia brasileira. Este é o quarto e último episódio da série de webinares "China: a Economia que Redefiniu o Mundo", promovida pelo CEBC. O evento contará com abertura do Embaixador Luiz Augusto de Castro Neves, Presidente do CEBC, e moderação de Tulio Cariello, Diretor de Conteúdo e Pesquisa do Conselho. Inscreva-se AQUI. |
TOKYO – In April 1925, a hundred years ago this month, Winston Churchill, in his capacity as chancellor of the exchequer, took the fateful decision to return pound sterling to the gold standard at the prewar rate of exchange.
Churchill then, not unlike US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent now, was torn between two objectives. On one hand, he wanted to maintain sterling’s position as the key currency around which the international monetary system revolved, and preserve London’s status as the leading international financial center. On the other hand, he, or at least influential voices around him, saw merit in a more competitive – read “devalued” – exchange rate that might boost British manufacturing and exports.
Why Churchill chose the first course is uncertain. The weight of history – British economic preeminence under the gold standard prior to World War I – pointed to restoring the monetary status quo ante. The City of London, meaning the financial sector, lobbied for a return to the prewar exchange rate against gold and the dollar. The most articulate opponent, John Maynard Keynes, had an off night when given an opportunity to make his case to the chancellor.
The effects were much as predicted. Sterling regained its position as a key international currency, and the City its position as a financial center. Now, however, they had to contend with New York and the dollar, which had gained importance, owing to disruptions to Europe from the war and the establishment of the Federal Reserve System to backstop US financial markets.
Also as predicted, British exports stagnated. At current prices, they were lower in 1928-29 than in 1924-25, when the decision to stabilize the exchange rate was taken.
Here, clearly, a strong pound and the high interest rates required to defend its exchange rate were unhelpful. But to attribute the British economy’s poor performance entirely to the exchange rate is to jump to conclusions.
For one thing, the export industries on which Britain traditionally relied – textiles, steel, and shipbuilding – were now subject to intense competition from later industrializers with more modern facilities, including the United States and Japan. The situation was not unlike the competition currently felt by US manufacturing from China and other emerging markets. Then as now, it is not clear that a weaker exchange rate would have made much difference, given the emergence of these rising powers. Nor did the tariffs the United Kingdom imposed in the 1930s revive its old industries.
Moreover, Britain had difficulty developing the new industries that constituted the technological frontier – electrical engineering, motor vehicles, and household consumer durables – even after devaluing the pound in 1931. The US and other countries were quicker to adopt new technologies and production methods, such as the assembly line. Union militancy discouraged investment. Workers with the relevant skills and work ethic were in short supply. Again, these are not unlike complaints heard today from the operators of TSMC’s new semiconductor fab in Arizona or Samsung’s chipmaking plants in Texas.
And, of course, it did not help that the 1930s were marked by trade wars and a decade-long depression.
Notwithstanding these problems, sterling’s position as an international currency survived the 1930s. In fact, the pound regained some of the ground as a reserve and payments currency that it lost to the dollar in the preceding decades. Whereas Britain was broadly successful in maintaining banking and financial stability, the US suffered three debilitating banking and financial crises. The UK maintained stable trade relations with its Commonwealth and Empire under a system of imperial preference that negated the effects of otherwise restrictive tariffs. And it remained on good terms with trade partners and political allies beyond the Commonwealth and Empire, including in Scandinavia, the Middle East, and the Baltics, where monetary authorities continued to peg their countries’ currencies to sterling.
The lessons for those seeking to preserve the dollar’s status as a global currency are clear. Avoid financial instability, which in the current context means not allowing problems in the crypto sphere to spill over to the rest of the banking and financial system. Limit recourse to tariffs, since the dollar’s wide international use derives in substantial part from America’s trade relations with the rest of the world. And preserve the country’s geopolitical alliances, since it is America’s alliance partners who are most likely to see the US as a reliable steward of their foreign assets and hold its currency as a show of good faith.
The US, to all appearances, is going down the opposite path, risking financial stability, imposing tariffs willy-nilly, and antagonizing its alliance partners. What was achieved over a long period could be demolished in the blink of an eye – or with the stroke of a president’s pen. Churchill was aware of the risks. As he put it, “To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.”
Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, is a former senior policy adviser at the International Monetary Fund. He is the author of many books, including In Defense of Public Debt (Oxford University Press, 2021).
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-ignores-three-lessons-from-britain-for-preserving-dollar-supremacy-by-barry-eichengreen-2025-04?utm_source=Project+Syndicate+Newsletter&utm_campaign=701558b881-ECON-NEWSLETTER_2025-10-04&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e4393264df-107714082&mc_cid=701558b881&mc_eid=55033487ab