3月9日付の子ども向けニュース、NBC Nightly News Kids Editionによると、米国の女の子たちに大人気のお人形さんブランド、アメリカン・ガール（American Girl）が選んだ『2023年の女の子』（アメリカン・ガール・オブ・ザ・イヤー、the 2023 American Girl of the Year） は、史上初めてインド系アメリカ人のカヴィ・シャルマ（Kavi Sharma）ちゃんになったそうです。
Kavi, the 2023 American Girl of the Year, teaches us about her heritage | Nightly News: Kids Edition（9:08～）
そういうインドならではの文化や価値観などを学ぶというか、ちょっと垣間見るためにも、史上初めてインド系アメリカ人でアメリカン・ガール・オブ・ザ・イヤー（the 2023 American Girl of the Year）になったカヴィ・シャルマ（Kavi Sharma）ちゃんのお人形さんやストーリー・ブックなど、この機会に入手してみても良いかも？
"The BTFP offers loans of up to one year in length to banks, savings associations, credit unions, and other eligible depository institutions pledging any collateral eligible for purchase by the Federal Reserve Banks in open market operations (see 12 CFR 201.108(b)), such as U.S. Treasuries, U.S. agency securities, and U.S. agency mortgage-backed securities. These assets will be valued at par."
MC: Well, let's turn to China for a minute. The US relationship with China has changed probably more than any other country in the last five years. We have seen tariffs that affect, I think, pretty much everyone in this room, and they are not going away, regardless of the administration that's in charge. What do you think is going to happen economically with the US relationship with China in the next few years?
Sonders:I don't worry about it as much as lots of them. First of all, China's demographics are really ugly. Really ugly. In fact, I'm reading a book right now. I'm listening to an audio book written by a geopolitical strategist bestselling author. His name is Peter Zayon and he wrote his most recent book is “the End of the World is Just the Beginning”.
And it's a long look at literally the history of the world and power factions and how they came to power and then how they lost power. And he kind of goes after, I think, the still perceived notion that China is taking over the world and he kind of takes the other side of that in large part due to demographics and the peril in hindsight, of one child policy. And they have a rapidly aging population. They don't have enough young people. In fact, as an aside, he was asked at a conference recently whether what he thought the chances were that China would invade Taiwan. And he said, I think it's close to zero, but not for the reasons that you think. It's because they literally can't afford they can't do it that many working age men. And I thought, well, that's an interesting take on a potential military conflict that I had not really thought about.
This year, India will take over China in terms of population, and what they're really trying to do is shift their economy. This is not a brand new thing. This is years away from being the producer of low cost manufacturing goods that they export to the rest of the world. And they're trying to have their economy driven more by domestic consumption. They're trying to shift more toward what the US is. And it's a tough shift. And their growth is quite a bit slower than it was when they were in their ascendancy and bringing everybody from the rural areas into the urban areas. They have a serious property crisis and problem. And when I think about big picture risks and the impact that it either already has or might have on the US. economy, I don't I don't have China pattern near the top of the list.
Sonders:Well, I'm a chronic insomniac, so anything can keep me up at night. Shopping list. Did I leave the iron on? But I think that these demographic shifts, which I think the United States still has the ability to sort of figure out, we've got to entice young people to have kids. My daughter, who just turned 23 yesterday, I was with her last night. She said, I don't know if I ever want kids. And it's like, oh, no, geopolitics, the unfriendliness. Sometimes it is the world. Those are the kinds of things that keep me up. A high rising burden of debt, the fact that we don't really have adults in the room wanting to talk honestly about it and I'm an equal opportunity critic, by the way. I think both sides of the aisle don't tend to do a very good job on this topic, as we're probably going to see and are facing now into the window.
MC：And what are some of the bright spots that you see?
司会：それでは、逆に、明るい話題は何でしょうか？
Sonders:So, like I said, I think that the next long phase of the US. economy has the potential to be more investment driven, more capital spending driven. And I not at the expense of what has been a very consumer spending oriented economy, but I think a slowly waning share of GDP from discretionary consumer spending and a rising share of longer term investments that I think will be ultimately to the benefit of the labor market. Benefit of the economy and means that some of the swings in the economy are less dramatic than when just discretionary consumption driven, especially like, you know, five and six when it was on the back of absurd debt levels and ridiculousness and lending to housing. This yeah.
地元産の品々や地元のお店を支援しようという動きは、ニューヨークでは、かなり以前から根強くて、2005年に登場した新語で、オックスフォード辞典の2007年「年間コトバ大賞」 （Word of the Year）受賞単語になった"Locavore"（ロカヴォア）とか、その後もなんやかんやと地元産の品々や地元のお店を支援するニューヨークで見られる様々な動きを取り上げていますが、そうした地元産の品々や地元のお店を支援する動きは、ここ数年のコロナ禍やウクライナ戦争により、「ジャスト・イン・ケース（万が一に備えた）在庫管理」という意味でも、とても重要視されるようになり、新たな投資が生まれ、地元の中小企業を支援することにつながって、地元経済、さらにはアメリカ経済にプラス…との分析。うーむ。確かに、そうですね。
MC: So what are some of the takeaways for retailers in terms of trends that we're seeing right now and trends of the pandemic may have caused going forward and trends that inflation may have catalyzed going forward?
Sonders: Well, one of the ones we were just talking about backstage. I know. For women. I couldn't be happier that sneakers are kind of all the rage. Lower heels, I think the near term for. And talk about preaching to. The choir here is the inventory glut problem has to work its way through and that it has already met and will continue to mean discounting in order to kind of flush out that inventory. Because we're still broadly somewhere in ten to 15% well above trend. Still ex autos, but that will work its way through.
And I think that retailers, any industry that is hurt by a downturn, it happened with my industry, financial services, in the aftermath. Of the global financial crisis and the excess that ended up reading that problem. Leverage and speculation and weaker balance sheets. And a lot of really valuable lessons were learned during that crisis.
And I think what is really being addressed right now is obviously supply chain management. And I don't believe we're in an environment that could be defined as de-globalization. I think it's just regionalization a smarter way to think about diversification of supply chain so that you're not putting all your eggs in in one basket. Ultimately I think that that's a positive for the economy.
I think we are going to slowly shift to more of an investment driven economy as every industry, every company needs to whether it's adjust their supply chains or adapt to the very important changes that have come out of COVID I think hybrid working that genes out of the bottle and it's not going back. That doesn't mean everybody works remotely but some sort of hybrid structure.
I think digitization there were... Retail probably not among them. But there were entire sectors like education, like healthcare that the lack of efficiency and use of technology was just shocking.
Now everybody has had to adapt to it very quickly because it sort of forced a realization that we've got to get into the current century and make sure that we've got a digital platform, whether it's for inventory management or in the case of healthcare records. And I think that that was probably a shift coming, but it absolutely got spread it out.
MC：Well, you know, I think our members would agree that even though I think you're right, I would not characterize retail as having been behind the curve in terms of digitization, it definitely spread things up, especially for our smaller members. Stores that did not have a large online presence suddenly had to do buy online, pick up in store. And I don't think that's going back.
Sonders: I agree. Now, the one long term trend that I think is relevant for the economy, broadly, everybody in this room, all industries, is that I purposely don't use the term deglobalization. However, we exited, somewhat coincidentally, with COVID what was about a two to three decade era where I've been using the term where everything gels, and I use that on purpose gel because the world had access to cheap goods, cheap energy, cheap labor. That ship is safe. That's not coming back. And a lot of that had to do with the ascendancy of China into the, you know, global trading world, and that obviously gave the world cheap goods, cheap labor. And I think for different reasons, the era of cheap energy is largely behind us too, which means the future doesn't look like the 25 years or so that era of great moderation, as is often called.
ソンダース氏：そうですね。さて、経済に関連して、この部屋にいる皆さん、幅広くすべての産業に関連すると思われる長期的なトレンドとして、私は意図的に脱グローバリゼーションという言葉は使いません。しかし、偶然にも、私たちは新型コロナウィルスによって、この20年から30年ほどの、私が「すべてがゲル化する」という言葉を使ってきた時代から抜け出しました。「ゲル化」という表現を使っていたのは、世界は安価な商品、安価なエネルギー、安価な労働力を手に入れることができたからです。この船はもう安全です。もう「ゲル化」には戻りません。その（要因の）多くは、中国が世界貿易の世界で台頭してきたことと関係があります。中国は、明らかに、安価な商品と安価な労働力を世界にもたらしました。別の理由もありますが、安価なエネルギーの時代もほぼ終わりました。つまり、将来は、よく言われるように、過去25年ほどの「大緩和の時代」（era of great moderation）とは違うようです。
Which also means, I think that even though inflation is rolling over, I think where it ultimately settles is probably at a higher plane than what was the case pre COVID. Now, inflation is
Sonders: Well, I think some of it is wage driven. I think that labor has not had a lot of power for several decades. And I'm not talking about unions. There's no there's no political angle to this comment. This is global. Other than a few regions in the world, demographics is such that there's a global labor shortage. And for 30 years or so, pre COVID capital had all the power and labor didn't. Now I think there's a shift, and simply because there's a shortage of labor, I think labor is wielding more power and capital and profits, which in the 25 years or so pre pandemic was a record high share of corporate profits and labor was a record low share of corporate profits. I think that pendulum is swinging.
MC：That probably also points to a little bit of the lessening of the currents of globalization.
司会：それはおそらく、グローバリゼーションの流れが少し弱まったことも指し示しているのでしょう。
Sonders: And that clearly was sped up by virtue of COVID especially because of the supply chain issue and every industry realizing, okay, we need to go from just in time inventory management to some just in case inventory management.
MC：Exactly. Well, let's talk about a couple of global issues that are massive right now that I know are on everyone's mind, and one is Ukraine. What do you think, if any, are the medium to long term results of that conflict for the economy?
Sonders: I'd like to hope that there's some sort of resolution. I mean, I know that that's sort of pie in the sky hope. But when I think about I'm always asked about risks to the broad economy or to the market, and I think of risks as both positive and negative. And that would be an incredibly positive outcome for that to happen.
It doesn't appear to be in the cards, but clearly the biggest impact has been through the energy and food channels. Ukraine has historically been called the red basket of the world and of the largest wheat producer. Russian has been a big oil supplier. So far, places like Europe have been really lucky that the winter has been somewhat mild and given them the bandwidth and the time, opportunity to build stockpiles and adjust their sources for in particular things like natural gas. But it's just a wild card and although I think you probably can get through this winter fairly well because so…
And they built those stockpiles. But I also think it's leading to global factions. There's a little bit of a backstop by China recently away from sort of blanket support of Russia, which I think is good news, but more broadly than just that war, maybe highlighted by the war, I think you're starting to see global factions from a trade perspective, from an access to your food and energy supplies. And I think that's going to be an important shift in the sort of world global order where you have these kind of pockets of connectivity.
By the way, the United States has extraordinary benefits associated with our geographic borders. The nature of what our country physically looks like, our access to water, the fact that we're energy independent, the fact that our northern and southern border countries are essentially friendly countries. When you think about…
Sonders: But most of the rest of the world just doesn't have that. Russia is trying to regain its own self by going after the borders closest to them, and I think they underestimated the result. But I think it's highlighting the unique benefits that the United States has hopefully keeping us safe. We are unbelievably productive as it relates to farming and agriculture. We have to export because we actually produce more than what we consume.
And I also think that the world is rethinking the whole subject of energy. Everybody knows we need to go toa sustainable future and a green world. It's just I think we're starting to understand that the pace of change has to be somewhat commensurate in terms of policy with the actual infrastructure associated. So I think it's forcing not a rethink, but all right, we need to still feed people and heat people's homes. So I think there's a rethink of the pace of policy relative to the pace of our infrastructure.
