Quote from Brucelee:
When Bernanke was asked about the weak $ and the feds policy of keeping it strong, all Bernanke could say was that in his opinion it was strong within America and the people could continue to buy the same amount of goods. That was what a strong $ meant to him. Seemed like a pretty narrow view in my opinion.
There is a limit to this. At some level of the $ either the manufacturers in the EM will not be able to stay in business or US corporations will have to give up some of their margin. Right now the way it works is we have a monopsony environmnet where large firms like Walmart buy from several Chinese suppliers and WALmart essentially dictates the price. Margins are razor thin and have been falling for the last 2 years, already there has been a lot of manufacturing consolidation in the EM and the resultant economies of scale have allowed EM companies to weather the preasure that the weak $ has put on their margins. On the flip side US corporate buyers are enjoying record profit margins. As the $ declines AND the consumer becomes more price sensitive and competition for a declining comsumer $ increases the margins at US firms will inevitably have to come down.
