“… the Obama administration’s trade strategy has been limited to hoping that a world economic rebound and a rising Chinese currency would double American exports in five years. Beyond this new enthusiasm, Mr. Obama’s approach to trade still appears to be hamstrung by strong opposition from his party’s union base.”

That’s hitting the nail on the head.  I won’t repeat my rants about the National Export Initiative, but you can read the latest here.

Coming to America? Pricy.

Now comes word that the United States is shooting itself in the trade foot once again.  Effective tomorrow, consular fees are being hiked at American embassies and consulates worldwide.  The increases are part of laudable efforts to control budgets, though it appears that the State Department is try to recover the full fixed cost of having a consular section at an embassy or consulate, rather than charging for the variable cost of delivering the service, which would be much lower.  Here’s a list of the new fees, though the language is typically obtuse.

Let’s consider the potential impacts on business for the United States.  The most obvious impact may be the increase in prices charged to apply for a treaty trader or investor visa (an E visa), springing up from $131 to $390 – a rise of 198%!  I doubt that this will deter a major investor from applying to come to the United States, but they will see it as the sort of nickle-and-diming that is now practiced by American airlines.  It will be an irritant that smacks of price gouging, since most other non-immigrant visas will now cost $140 to apply.  Does processing an E visa really cost that much more than a visa for a normal business traveler?  I doubt it, but perhaps I am mistaken.

I am more worried about the new $140 charge to apply for a tourist visa.  The increase is only $9, but tourists can be extraordinarily price sensitive, so this one could have an adverse impact on the numbers of visitors the United States will receive.  It’s tough enough, for instance, for Hawaii to attract Asian tourists across most of an ocean, but even tougher when we charge for visas and competing tropical destinations do not.  And bear in mind that these fees are simply to apply for a visa.  There is no guarantee that you will actually get one.  The visa application fee is on top of the costs engendered by having to go to an American embassy or consulate for a personal interview.  Not all potential travelers live in or near a city where the United States has a consular office, so simply applying for a tourist visa can involve substantial expense and inconvenience for the applicant.  We don’t make it easy.  Why should an Asian gambler go through all this hassle to fly across the Pacific to Las Vegas when they can more easily and enjoyably hit the new casinos in Macau or Singapore?

Full cost recovery sounds a reasonable goal, but the unintended consequences can be killers.  It is really a clash between those who view entry to the United States as a privilege, and those who wish to attract visitors who pay for jobs in our country.  Most of our competitors come down on the latter side of the argument, and wonder why the world’s richest country can’t foot the bill for its own legal requirements.

Susquehanna Steam Electric Station, built with GE reactors a quarter century ago.

The United States paid a very high price for the decades that we effectively withdrew from the nuclear power game.  Despite developing some of the best and safest nuclear power technology (I’m thinking U.S. Navy, not Three Mile Island here), other countries have developed nuclear technology in other directions since we took our sabbatical.  The players in competitions for new U.S. nuclear plants include the Japanese, the French and even one Kazakh company.  We haven’t seen the Chinese and the Russians yet.  Let’s take a look at who is who.

There are two broad categories of nuclear power reactors: pressurized water reactors (PWR) and boiling water reactors (BWR).  The PWR builders include Westinghouse, Unistar and Mitsubishi.  Westinghouse certainly sounds like a U.S. company, and it once was, but today Westinghouse is owned by Toshiba (67%), The Shaw Group (20%), Kazatomprom (10%) and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries (3%).  That makes Westinghouse a Japanese-owned company with minority U.S. and Kazakh interests.  UniStar is a joint venture between Constellation Energy (U.S.) and Electricité de France.  And Mitsubishi, of course, is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, one of Japan’s biggest companies.

The only BWR reactors available for U.S. power projects are from a U.S.-Japan joint venture formed by General Electric and Hitachi, known as GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy.

Westinghouse would supply the reactors for fourteen projects in the United States currently awaiting approval.  UniStar has three potential customers, so does GE Hitachi, and Mitsubishi has two.  Those are just applications, however, so we are a long way from reviving what was once a thriving American industry.  That means lost jobs, but not necessarily any loss in quality.  Japan and France have remarkable safety records in their nuclear programs and we can benefit from that.  But pity the poor Congressman who decides we need a Buy America rule for nuclear reactors.  Betcha you one of them is going to try it.

praseodymium, cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, samarium, gadolinium

I once testified to a Senate committee about whether or not trade embargoes work.  This was back when the knee-jerk response  to anything another country did, that we didn’t like, was to propose an embargo on American exports to that country.  The senators and their staffers were asking me about the effectiveness of embargoes against South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) – and they didn’t like what I had to say.  I simply told them that embargoes are useless unless you control 100% of the supply or close to it.  The only impact I could see of those particular embargoes was that U.S. exporters were losing sales to suppliers of similar products from France and Japan. American jobs were being lost, but I suppose we felt morally superior.

An article yesterday in the International Herald Tribune makes me think conditions are ripe for an embargo that would work.  Unfortunately, it’s one that China could use against the entire world, especially against the industrialized western nations with advanced military technologies.  And it could be far more effective than anything OPEC ever threw at us, because China controls 97% of the supply – well into my threshold for a successful embargo.

What’s the product?  Rare earths.  Unless you are a metallurgist, this isn’t a big item on your shopping list.  But they do show up in a lot of fairly critical things.  Rare earths include minerals like neodymium which is important for making magnets used in many high tech applications, especially sophisticated military stuff.  Cerium is used in water filters and to polish glass.  Navigation systems for the U.S. Army’s tanks rely on rare earths.  So do the radars used by the U.S. Navy.  Europium goes into color televisions, and rare earths are showing up in new green energy systems.

Other countries have and can mine rare earths.  Prices in recent years haven’t made it worthwhile, and the environmental consequences of mining have lowered any desire to get into the business – except in China, where adverse mining conditions are routinely tolerated.  Molycorp is looking into re-opening its old Mountain Pass mine in California, but faces formidable hurdles in doing so.  Other companies and countries are looking into it as well.  In most cases, it makes strategic but not economic sense.

China has already flexed its muscles with rare earths.  Beijing has long imposed export quotas and successively cut the size of the quota between 2005 and 2009.  Customers in foreign markets panicked last year when China thought out loud about an embargo on exporting five different rare earths.  They didn’t do it, but it got everybody’s attention.  I was interested to see that the Mountain Pass mine was part of Unocal when China’s CNOOC tried to buy the oil company in 2005.

As a result, governments and mining companies are scrambling to either redevelop old mines or find and exploit new deposits.  The United States is looking at establishing a national rare earth stockpile.  But it’s going to take years and a lot of cash before we can feel secure with world supplies.

GE turbine - No protection

Members of Congress and other politicians love to wax eloquent about American ingenuity, determination and inventiveness.  And yet they refuse to trust those very qualities when faced with competition from overseas.  Senator Charles Schumer (D – New York) may be the biggest unbeliever in the ability of American companies to make their own way in the world.  After all, in the Senator’s mind apparently, all foreign competition is somehow unfair and must be countered by legislation to protect us from nefarious outsiders.  Sounds like something the cadres in Beijing might come up with, doesn’t it?

Senator Schumer’s latest is to propose “Buy America” procurement requirements on all federally-financed programs to encourage investment in renewable energy.  The flash point, reported by Bloomberg last week, is a project in Texas.  Seems that a joint venture, involving Americans and Chinese, has the temerity to plan a $1.5 billion wind farm that would make use of Chinese turbines.  The organizers haven’t actually asked for Federal funding, though that is a possibility.  Even using Chinese-produced turbines, the 600 MW project still stands to create 1,000 new jobs in Texas.  But Schumer, not satisfied with 1,000 jobs in a state not his own, argues that he doesn’t want U.S. funding to subsidize “green” jobs anywhere else in the world (though one is tempted to wonder if he would object as mightily to turbines from, say, Denmark).  The Senator hasn’t glommed on to the idea that the Texas project is a U.S.-Chinese joint venture and that joint ventures generally mean that the benefits are shared among the partners – jointly.  In fact, the partners say that the Chinese are providing some of the financing and the turbines, while all the construction in Texas will be done by American workers and some 70% of the value of the project, including the huge towers and immense blades will be made in the United States from U.S. materials.  That apparently isn’t enough for Senator Schumer.

Is Schumer’s interest prompted by the proximity of Connecticut-based General Electric, the leading U.S. producer of renewable energy equipment?  Presumably there are GE employees who commute from neighboring New York.  But no.  General Electric is on record as opposing “Buy America” for renewable energy projects.  GE executives, and probably the rank and file, realize that such policies jeopardize GE’s own sales of turbines and other products outside the United States when other nations respond to Schumer’s folly.  GE is already the world’s #2 supplier of wind turbines, behind Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems, and they are wise enough to know that you win some contracts and you lose others.  That does not mean they need protection.

Nor does the U.S. wind energy industry as a whole.  Current estimates are that the industry will create 20,000 new jobs in the United States over the next decade, which seems healthy enough.  Steve Bolze, who heads up GE’s power and water division, told Bloomberg: “What the U.S. needs, which Europe, China and other countries have, is stable, long-term policy.” We don’t have that, and troglodytes like Senator Schumer will ensure that we don’t.  No wonder GE is looking elsewhere for growth.

Premium Fuel

Here we go again.  Politicians using a laudable, popular objective as a front for what is perhaps not so laudable.  Joined by 28 others, Representatives Earl Pomeroy (D – North Dakota) and John Shimkus (R – Illinois) have introduced H.R. 4140, a bill to extend for five years the lives of the various subsidies and import restrictions that have been boosting the corn ethanol industry in the United States.  The bill would extend the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, the Small Ethanol Producers Tax Credit, and the Cellulosic Ethanol Production Tax Credit (the latter for three years).  No, I don’t understand the differences, either.  What prompts this post is that the bill would also extend a special tariff that applies an effective tariff of more than 29% on imported ethanol.

Ask most economists and many environmentalists and I expect they will tell you that this bill is a bad idea.  On the environmental side, there is mounting evidence that corn-based ethanol production harms the environment as much as it helps it.  Sugar and a few other crops, I’m told, are far more ecologically sound – and Brazil’s sugar-based ethanol is often looked to as the model for the industry.  Unfortunately, sugar cane can’t be grown in the sponsoring politicians’ states, but corn can.  The economic rationale for corn-based ethanol appears increasingly unsound.  To simplify, production of corn ethanol reduces the availability of corn for other uses, such as feed for animal production or, indeed, corn for human consumption.  Obviously, this raises the price of corn, and raises the price of everything the consumer buys that is derived from corn.  Most economists would say we would be better off if we can produce our ethanol (if it is really needed) from crops or on land that do not compete with as many other uses.  Again, sugar, certain quick-growing grasses and various other sources of cellulose come to the fore.  This is without considering the costs of operating the corn ethanol industry itself.  In a nutshell, it is an industry with doubtful environmental or economic credentials, largely surviving due to the government handouts that Mssrs. Pomeroy, Shimkus and the others wish to extend.  And I haven’t even gotten to the part that worries me.

Responding to oil shocks and wanting to nurture an ethanol industry that showed all the signs of becoming a political cash cow for the Midwest, the U.S. Congress in 1980 established a “temporary” import duty of 14.27¢ per liter of ethanol.  As many “temporary” things do in Washington, this duty has persisted for a generation.  It was argued at the time that the duty was necessary to give our home-grown ethanol industry a chance to get started.  We generally complain when we hear the “infant industry” arguments of other countries, but why bother with consistency?  Energy independence was the watchword then, not the environment or even economic sense, and our Congress wasn’t going to let us fall prey to a global conspiracy of predatory sugar farmers.

It didn’t matter that our temporary ethanol duty was a pretty clear violation of our GATT (now WTO) commitments.  Our U.S. trade negotiators (the same ones the politicians like to say can’t negotiate a good deal) went out and dutifully negotiated a legal figleaf for the duty.  So, thirty years later, the previously illegal duty remains in place.  The United States imports a bit of ethanol despite the duty.  Canada sells us some more corn ethanol duty-free under NAFTA, and Trinidad & Tobago ships in some sugar ethanol at a reduced duty under the Caribbean Basin Initiative. Who gets left out?  Brazil, the world’s most efficient producer of sugar-based ethanol.

Where does that leave us?  We have an environmentally and economically doubtful industry, propped up by hefty Federal subsidies, and supported by a “temporary” customs duty that keeps out ethanol that makes environmental and economic sense.  When applied to 2009 prices, that 14.27¢ per liter duty equals something north of 29%, making it one of our highest tariff walls in any industry.  To “temporarily” protect a 30-year-old “infant” industry.  When do they grow up?

I am not alone in that worry, as I discovered yesterday morning when I read an opinion piece in the Asia edition of the Wall Street Journal.  Titled “Don’t Push The WTO Beyond Its Limits,” it is an article by a fellow in a position to know how much political weight the WTO’s dispute structure can withstand: James Bacchus, a former U.S. congressman and trade negotiator, and – most importantly – a former member of the WTO’s Appelate Body.  And that is exactly Bacchus’ point: the WTO process may crumble under an all-out fight between the United States and China over exchange rates.  Bacchus outlines two scenarios, both dire.

Legislation has already been introduced in Congress that, if passed, would characterize China’s undervaluation of the yuan as an export subsidy and would require the Obama Administration to apply “countervailing duties” to all imports from China.  Aside from the disaster this would create in all those American companies that use Chinese inputs and parts, this would massively increase U.S. unemployment as Walmart and other importers find their cost of doing business quickly rising.  Interesting to see if a Democratic, pro-labor Congress will do this during Congressional election campaigns.  (There I go again, just not able to resist the lure of rationality.)  But, should the Congress be nuts enough to do this and Obama crazy enough to go along, the resulting “countervailing” duties against Chinese goods will be speedily taken to the WTO by the Chinese.  And on excellent grounds.  I helped negotiate the WTO’s rules on export subsidies and countervailing duties – and currency valuation is not covered by those rules.  Regardless of what a member of Congress from East Podunk says, an undervalued currency is not prima facie evidence of an export subsidy.  Therefore, duties to counter the undervaluation are not warranted.  Should the WTO take the case, it will speedily decide for Beijing, leaving Washington to choose between backing down or ignoring the decision.  If the latter, China will eventually be allowed to retaliate – and on a huge scale, further destroying American jobs.  Is this really what the Congress wants?

The Big Mac Index - as good as any.

The second scenario that Bacchus lays out is more subtle, based in the original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which has been subsumed by the WTO.  Article XV:4 (which addresses the impact of exchange rates on trade) says that signatory governments “shall not, by exchange action, frustrate the intent of the provisions of” the GATT.  The United States could, theoretically, bring a case in Geneva that relies on this provision, but that will open a political and diplomatic can of worms that could rebound for decades.  Neither the GATT nor the WTO have ever had a dispute using this clause, so there is no case law to be consulted.  A case would call into question how to measure over or under-valuation of a currency versus other currencies, should the WTO measure it or should the IMF, what sorts of currency controls need to be governed by either organization and how, and at what point, a currency is so out of line that further cases can be launched.  This is a morass we really don’t want to get into, especially with the economic power of the United States and China pushing in different directions.

To get a feel for how far this could go, take a look at The Economist‘s Big Mac Index (which, frankly, is as good an index as anything published by the IMF or by government agencies).  The March 16 edition of the BMI shows the Chinese renminbi (or yuan) nearly 49% undervalued when compared to the U.S. dollar.  It also shows the Malaysian dollar as nearly 41% undervalued.  Should the United States take action against China, but not Malaysia?  The same index shows the U.S. dollar nearly 48% undervalued against the Norwegian kroner, so should Washington expect a suit filed by Oslo?  See where this is going?  Chaos.

Tied Yuan

I have hesitated to comment on whether or not China should revalue the yuan.  Not because I’m shy, but because everybody else is jumping on this one.

We see American politicians ranting and raving, certain that China is deliberately hurting the world through exchange rate policy.  These are generally the same know-nothings that are convinced that China will sell all its American bonds as an act of economic war – like they expect that Beijing will enjoy selling at a huge loss.  How dumb do they think the Chinese are?

The other extreme, of course, is the Chinese stonewall reaction, closing the gates and refusing to consider any possibility of revaluation.  They have done this so much on so many issues that Beijing has now trained a large cadre of international reporters to say that change will only come if we stop criticizing.  Hunh?  It’s a brilliant negotiating position for China, but it should be ignored by the rest of the of the world.  It seems that any criticism of China, no matter the subject, earns condemnation as an infringement of Chinese sovereignty.  But, since any compromise with another country on anything is a limitation on sovereignty, this amounts to a Chinese declaration that it will not negotiate with anyone and plans to hunker down in the Forbidden City and dictate to the world.  I’m not convinced that China really wants a return to the days of the Middle Kingdom, but perhaps I am too hopeful.  At best, the sovereignty plea is rather immature.

It is in China’s interest to revalue the yuan – slowly.  Revaluation will be key to controlling China’s inflation which bids to become a major destabilizing influence in the country.  Revaluation is an easy way to reduce prices by making imports less expensive and forcing domestic producers to compete with those imports.  China, however, needs to accomplish this slowly.  A Chinese official said last week that many Chinese exporters are operating on a profit margin of only 2%, which means these firms are highly vulnerable to a sharp revaluation.  It also means that China’s export machine is not the juggernaut the world believes it is, that China may do better without those marginal exporters, and that China would be wise to move some of its resources out of exports and into domestic ventures through increasing domestic consumption.  Which brings us back to revaluing the yuan to control domestic inflation.

One might also argue that, by tying the yuan to the U.S. dollar, China has actually given away its sovereignty for the sake of marginal exports and limited its own ability to control its economy.  Any country tying their currency to the U.S. dollar has surrendered exchange rate policy and much of their ability to control prices to the U.S. Federal Reserve.  Does Beijing really want the key decisions about Chinese inflation to be made by Ben Bernanke?  I didn’t think so.

So, revaluation is in China’s own interest.  But sudden change brings unanticipated consequences.  So best to do it in predictable stages, slowly, and to protect Chinese sovereignty by re-establishing Beijing’s authority over its own currency.

- Keith Richards, Mick Jagger

Can’t think of an industry more loved and hated than Big Pharma.  We need, want, even love their products.  We hate to pay for them.  Some of us think we are “owed” Big Pharma’s products, and that governments should pay them for us.  Others think Big Pharma should give it away for free.  But, if they do, where will newer better drugs come from?  Conundrum.

The prevailing perception is that the Big Pharma companies are money-grubbing carnivorous capitalists who gleefully and willfully charge us all through the nose for their life-saving wonders.  The counter image is that their research labs are filled with wonderful caring people who are trying to save the world from disease.  The reality, of course, lies between these extremes.

IMS Health published a study Monday that declares that the major pharmaceutical companies are failing to enter and capture markets in the developing world.  The United States and Japan remain the two largest pharmaceutical markets in the world, but China is about to leap into third place.  And Brazil, Russia and India are right behind the Chinese.  Venezuela, Poland, Argentina, Turkey, Mexico, Vietnam, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Romania, Egypt, Pakistan and the Ukraine are all becoming major pharma consumers.  But the point highlighted by IMS is that most of the major players in worldwide pharmaceuticals are missing the boat.  Some of the big European drug companies are in the game (Bayer, Nycomed, Sanofi-Aventis, Novartis, Novo Nordisk).  Of the big American firms, only Pfizer seems to have responded in a big way.

IMS prescribes a regime of (1) recognizing that these emerging markets (they dub them, unfortunately, “pharmerging markets”) are taking off, (2) doing your homework to understand the complexity of these markets, and (3) adapting strategies accordingly.  Good sound advice for any company with any product that is entering a new market.

Curiously, the IMS study does not look at why the big American companies have seemingly been caught napping.  Lip service is paid to hard times economically.  Something was said about venture capital drying up, though that wouldn’t impact the truly big companies.  Having worked with pharma companies, large and small, I suspect something else is at play.  My candidates concern how prices are set in many markets – and protection of small local pharma companies in many developing countries.

Which is the real Lipitor? (Source: Pfizer Inc.)

Many governments see pharmaceuticals as a flagship industry that must be developed for prestige as much as for health reasons.  Countries go through fads on this kind of thing.  In the 1960s, every country had to develop a steel industry, then they moved on to having their own national airlines.  National pharmaceutical champions became the norm in the 1990s and that continues today.  When I worked in Slovakia in the late 1990s, any company that wanted to sell a pharmaceutical in the Slovak market had to submit a complete description of the drug to the Slovak Government, including exhaustive detail on ingredients and manufacturing techniques.  For the “health and safety” of the Slovak citizen, of course.  Funny that these submissions were all kept safely in a vault inside the headquarters of Slovakia’s biggest pharmaceutical producer.  Amazing how quickly this Slovak company could churn out low-cost generic versions of the same drugs.  I wonder why Big Pharma stopped selling new drugs in Slovakia?

Pricing is the other big item.  Most countries exercise extreme control over pharmaceutical pricing, either directly or through their status as the sole insurer in the market.  Working in eastern Europe, I found that the normal pricing formula was to require the pharma company to reveal the three lowest prices for its drug worldwide, and to “accept” an average of those three as the maximum price in your country.  Now let’s see, we take the average of the three lowest prices out of 150 or so markets … I wonder why profit margins are dwindling?  Not only do such pricing practices cut the funds available for future research on new drugs, but there is incentive for the big companies to stay out of absurdly low price markets so that they can maintain some sort of reasonable profit margin for their shareholders.

But that’s filthy lucre.  I forgot, Big Pharma is supposed to give it away.  Guess I’ll sell that pharma stock.

Georgia: Land of Sweet Mountain Water

The story begins in 2006 when Russia, in a political fit, closed its borders to goods coming in from Georgia, mostly wine and bottled water.  It was a vain attempt at coercion by Moscow that, ironically, may be strengthening Georgia’s economy and has certainly diversified Georgia’s customer base.  Not that Georgian companies weren’t hurt by the Russian embargo, but most of that hurt was swamped by the damage caused by the 2008 war between the two neighbors.  Neighborhood spats are never good.

Moscow has finally seen its error and has said it will reopen the border later this month.  Georgia’s exporters are greeting this with glee, but – now that Russia has proven itself an unreliable market – the Georgian companies are not slowing their push to develop other markets.

Georgian wine enjoyed a great market in Russia before the embargo, which almost wiped out several producers.  Georgia’s wine exports dropped from 10.6 million liters in the second quarter of 2005 to less than 2 million in the same months of 2009.  Their wines are little known in the West, but Georgia is developing new customers in central Asia, China and recently appeared in Singapore.

Georgia’s top bottled water producer, Borjomi, saw its sales drop 43%.  The company is bouncing back with its bottles now sold in thirty different countries, even entering the China market in 2008.

Just goes to show that embargoes almost never work the way you think they might.

Amazing what's under there

Can you have too much of a good thing?  Mae West said no, but Mongolia’s leaders aren’t sure about that.  A friend in Ulan Bator sent me a link to a Bloomberg article about Mongolia’s riches and the dangers of “Dutch Disease“, the idea that a sudden surge of wealth can make future growth more difficult.

Dutch disease is an old concept in economics, though it acquired the current name only in the 1960s.  The thought is that a sudden influx of wealth, whether to an economy or to an individual, can lead to bad decisions as to how to use it properly.  It’s like blowing your new earnings as a pro football player and having nothing left when a knee injury kills your job.  The name came from the impact of enormous quantities of North Sea natural gas raising the value of the Dutch guilder, which then killed Dutch exports, crippling the economy of the Netherlands.  Similar things happened in Spain with the influx of New World gold and silver, and the discovery of gold in Australia in the mid-19th century.  And Nigeria has done an abysmal job of harnessing revenues from its immense oil and gas industries.

Mongolia is seeing a rush for significant resources of gold, uranium, coal and copper.  In fact, Mongolian leaders compare it to the influx of riches during the great Mongolian conquests of Central Asia, China and beyond.  Canada’s Ivanhoe Mines and Rio Tinto of the United Kingdom invested in a joint venture last year with the Mongolian government to develop copper and gold deposits worth perhaps $30 billion.    Peabody Energy of the United States is among potential partners for a $2 billion coal deposit.  Ivanhoe is in another big coal mine.  Considering that Mongolia’s GDP is a little over $5 billion, you can see the potential impact just these projects can have.  And there are more to be developed.

The problem is Mongolia’s lopsided distribution of income.  Like many developing countries, there is an elite that reaps most of the benefits – and a large underclass that does not.  Mongolia’s leaders, many of them Harvard educated (the point of the Bloomberg article) appear to see the issue, but it remains to be seen what they will do about it.  It is encouraging that they are at least talking to experts from Chile and elsewhere, whose countries have managed to avoid an infestation of Dutch Disease.

A mine is a terrible thing to waste.