Saturday, January 24, 2015

USA FTZ v China FTZ

There is a difference in the terms, in China FTZ means Free Trade Zone and in USA FTZ means Foreign Trade Zone.

In both the idea is to facilitate international trade outside of the rules and regulations of the sovereign state, by order of the sovereign state.

In the USA a Foreign Trade Zone is designed to assist a Boeing and its customers in escaping duties related to international trade.

In China a Free Trade Zone is designed to compartmentalize experiments in financial matters independent of ChiCom rules and regs.    Makes for safer experimenting.

Many blogs are tracking SGE withdrawals currently, using it as the yardstick for Chinese wholesale gold demand. While partially true, I would like to emphasize this yardstick has become elastic.
Before the SGE’s subsidiary, the Shanghai International Gold Exchange (SGEI), was launched total SGE withdrawals provided us a clear view on Chinese wholesale gold demand, as the SGE is the exchange where all import and domestically mined gold is required to be sold first (in addition to scrap) before entering the Chinese domestic market. This clear view is now blurred.
The SGEI facilitates gold trading in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ). Physical gold trading in the FTZ is completely separated form the Chinese domestic gold market, which is a closed market; bullion exports are prohibited and only 15 banks are licensed to import bullion. 

So the difference is in USA the FTZ exists to keep zombie companies on life support by privatizing profits and socializing losses, while in China the FTZ is designed to experiment in new ways of producing value.

It bugs me when we are losing out to competitors because zombies own the policy-machine.

Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.


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