Chinese property investment was re-directed to the Seattle market when Vancouver BC passed a foreign-investment tax intended to stop Chinese nationals from making homes unaffordable to Canadians, and then just sitting on empty units. Like London with Russian money.

The money moved down here and resulted in phenomena like a 4,000 SF waterfront home across the street from my SIL's being held by a Chinese investor who has never set foot in the home in 5 years. It gets maintained, but never used.

Now that the Chinese are pulling back, Seattle area prices have crested, and the competitive bidding wars have ceased.

It means that there are fewer jobs and less pressures to increase wages. It also can effect interest rates and cost of capital for firms.

Basically, businesses that could have gotten money to build their business will have to look elsewhere or not expand at all. It means jobs, if this investment goes away for good, it means about 1 million less jobs for American Workers. Less jobs means more competition for those jobs and lower pay for workers. 7 million Americans work for foreign owned companies. Average compensation is $81,000 a year.

and, with less money in the US economy, it means the US will have less leverage over China and Chinese investors.

I thought we could manage spending beyond our means because of foreign investors giving us loan after loan. And we are supposed to have a vote on raising the debt limit again, right?

those are banks (mostly controlled by the government to some extent in China) loaning to the US, not directly into the US economy. I think the plunge in investment is talking about direct investment - buying goods, buying real estate, etc.

However, we owe China 1.2 trillion in loans. Chinese banks a still basically state owned. Therefore, this could be another way for them to retaliate. Call in the loans, refuse to give any more loans. Point being, they have a lot of leverage over us. I guess that could be step 2 if tRump decides to escalate this trade war.

Credit: mahatmakanejeeves https://www.democraticunderground.com/111686033

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/us/politics/china-investment-trade-war.html

I'm glad they've stopped buying up so much of NYC

investment if our Real Estate market in 2011-2015,we would have tens of Thousands of unsold Properties languishing into disrepair. BTW,they pretty much bailed two years ago and fortunately the victims of the California Wild Fires are picking up the slack as well as another surge of Retirees from the Frost Belt.

Never forget,the Chinese are true Capitalists and they are flipping all this Homes they bought back before 2016. China Tourism to Vegas has pretty much ground to a halt. All those Tour Buses that used to ply the Streets and Highways are now sitting on lots around town. You can only bite the hand that feeds just so many times.

They used to be all over the Northeast as well - NYC, Niagara Falls, Boston and Washington DC were big, as well as touring Ivy League schools.

My daughter's middle school hosted a Chinese exchange program each summer with maybe 25-30 kids from China spending 3 weeks in the US with local host families. They'd spend some time in a local school taking classes in English, but each summer, they would take time out to go to the local Outlet Malls and then to visit Yale.

We had several Charter Companies running almost 24/7 up to a couple years ago. Same for Charters coming out of LA and SF,Real Estate Brokers would host many of this Charters,jokingly they would show up with suitcases of cash,and they would have Paralegals as well as Noteries good to go at a moments notice.


Amazing how the average American had no clue as to this happening. Our Nieces Son,who now teaches English in China,was hired by a Tour Operator as a
Interpreter to work the Tour Groups that flew direct into Minneapolis. And yes,besides the Mall of America,it was touring Farms for sale as well as Residential and Commercial properties.


As the Young man said the other day,China has a ten year plan as well as a twenty year plan,and it is all about being self sufficient within twenty years plus.

In its 29 months, the Trump economy has created 810,000 FEWER jobs than Obama's last 29 months

and the pace of job creation has markedly slowed in 2019 ...

Summary: Average monthly net new jobs created
221,000    <- Obama's last 29 months
194,000    <- Trump's 29 months (February 2017 through June 2019)
172,000    <- 2019 so far (January through June)
144,000    <- Last 5 months (February 2019 through June 2019)

Most of this is from a Forbes contributor. It also checks out with the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers

details: https://www.democraticunderground.com/111685907

If someone says that, well gee, my boss can't find anyone to fill the open positions, the unemployment rate is at 50 year lows, blah blah, ask them why, if the labor market is so "tight", why the prime-age (25-54) labor force participation rate is down from pre-Great Recession average levels, going decades back -
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=12256909

As for stocks, looking at the S&P 500 it's 2985 at the close today (July 22). That's up only 3.9% from the January 26, 2018 close of 2873.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/111686040