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Daily Maverick
22-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Maverick
Murder in Middle America — designed in the US, made in China
Part 4 in a five-part series. Read Part 1 here, Part 2 here and Part 3 here. In the denouement of Agatha Christie's classic crime novel Murder on the Orient Express, Detective Hercule Poirot concludes that ALL the suspects were guilty. It was similarly the case in the demise of the US manufacturing industry. Whodunnit? Almost everyone! In alphabetical order: consumers, mainstream economics, US Congress, US Federal Reserve, US Inc, US management consultants, US tax accountants, US retail sector, US Treasury, Wall Street… all these culprits played their part in the 'murder' of US manufacturing. And this is before one points a finger at the foreign accomplices… Prospects for the investment future of US Inc With two exceptions, I do not intend to call out these culprits. The first exception is US Inc as currently constituted. I do this more to highlight the headwinds that will now face foreign investors whose default allocation to equities globally has long – and rightly – favoured US Inc. As noted previously, in December 2024, US Inc's weight in MSCI's All Country World (equity) Index was 66%, twice the rest of the world combined. In 2000, that weight was a much lower 52%. In 2009, Rolling Stone Magazine did a cover story on Goldman Sachs. In it was a colourful quote. They likened the US investment bank to 'a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money'. The uncomfortable truth is that this would not be a wholly unfair description as to what US Inc became over the past two decades, especially as it has spread its tentacles worldwide. US Inc's profit margins: Hard to see them rising from here Profits for the US's S&P 500 companies as a share of US GDP averaged about 6% from 1960 to 2000, with a dip down to 3% in the 1980s. Since China's 2001 entry into the WTO, US Inc's profits as a share of US GDP have nearly doubled to 11%. Between 2000 and 2023, US Inc's share of the global profit pool also more than doubled, from 17% to 38%. Globalisation has been a boon for US corporations since they were able to grow profits much faster abroad than they could at home. Frequently they did this at the cost of foreign competitors by cashing in on the soft power appeal of American brands like Levi's Jeans and by outsourcing production of these 'American' goods to nations with low wage costs, as Levi's did with its products to textile manufacturers in China, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Or, as Apple has said of its iPhones: 'Designed in America, Made in China.' Finished products were imported back into the US at much higher profit margins than were previously available when these products were truly 'Made in the USA'. Indeed, sometimes even these profits made from selling foreign-made products back to US consumers were still retained in intermediate holding companies located in tax havens like Eire! Products made in low-cost foreign locations were also sold – with profits accruing in tax haven-located holding companies – mainly into foreign markets able to sustain higher prices like Europe, Japan and increasingly even China. In the period since 2000, when China's WTO entry constituted a positive(!) game-changer for US Inc, the overall average earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margin for US firms increased from 10% to 11%. All this margin increase was driven from abroad as foreign margins rose from 10% to 14% while domestic margins stayed broadly flat over the same period. S&P 500 firms did especially well in this era: their foreign EBIT margins increased from 11% to 16% over 2000 to 2020 while less-agile non-S&P 500 firms rather saw their foreign margins decline from 9% to 7%. Domestic EBIT margins stayed flat for both S&P 500 and non-S&P 500 firms. Overall, the biggest gainers were – no surprise here! – US 'manufacturing' firms outsourcing production abroad, typically paying their foreign workers in owned subsidiaries 60% less than their US workers. Those US firms that used foreign contract manufacturing companies – like Apple used Foxconn – likely compressed the wage component in their final product sales price even more. A more hostile global tax environment Note that these foreign margin increases were all achieved before tax. Add to the above, US Inc followed the judicious use of offshore holding companies to shield profits from tax: practising transfer pricing, pursuing royalty 'farming', carrying out tax planning (of which the most infamous example was dubbed the ' Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich '), plus benefiting from the feature of the US Tax Code that allowed US corporations not to repatriate profits earned abroad and not pay tax on them until they did. Thus, one can see why the foreign profits earned abroad by US Inc rose so markedly after 2000. Also note that, for the global operations of Big Tech companies, accruing profits for the latter where it was most tax efficient to do so was often done by the press of a button. Were this foreign operating 'digital environment' to become less friendly – and the EU, via its Digital Markets Act, is on a campaign to achieve precisely this end – US Big Tech would be negatively impacted. Meanwhile, in 2020, seven countries (Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore and Switzerland) hosting but 6% of the foreign employees of US Inc, earned nearly half US Inc's foreign profits. At what point did profit morph into greed? Dylan's chorus again: Well, it's sundown on the union And what's made in the USA Sure was a good idea 'Til greed got in the way Granted, the American Bard (who also earned the nickname of 'The Voice of Protest') most likely used the word ' greed' for ' profit '. In US Inc's defence, in today's hypercompetitive world, it is hard to imagine that they would not pursue every opportunity to capture profit where they could, at home or abroad. However, Dylan implicitly raised the question – to echo a line used by General Motors in its heyday – ' whether what is good for US Inc is good for the USA?' Trump and his team are unequivocally answering 'no'. A rockier road that lies ahead for US Inc in its operations Looking forwards and from the perspective of equity investors worldwide in US stocks, how much of this post-2000 Golden Age for US Inc is sustainable in Trump's World? What might be the consequences of the seismic changes now taking place across today's investment landscape? How might global investors change their long-established behaviour? What do we know with some degree of certainty? The US dollar will, over time, likely continue to fall in value, especially against its Western DXY Index crosses: the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swedish krona and Swiss franc. How the US dollar might fare against Asian and other emerging market currencies is less clear… though the recent strength of both the Taiwanese and Singaporean dollars may be portents of what lies ahead; Adding to this negative currency effect, inputs imported into the US now face tariffs and so will cost more. Not all of these duties will be passed on to US consumers so profit margins for many US companies will shrink. In addition, higher end prices will almost certainly curb consumption volumes, creating a negative volume gearing effect. This will weigh on profits; A product bearing an 'American brand' wherever made has heretofore usually attracted a premium price. This advantage is vanishing and may soon be a liability: think Tesla where, in February 2025, sales in Germany plunged by 76%, in Australia by 66% and in China by 49%; If inflation leaks into the US system and interest rates are forced to rise, the cost of capital to US Inc will rise too; Foreign consumers are becoming less welcoming of US products. For example, Canadians are boycotting US products; the Chinese are cooling towards Apple, Tesla, Boeing and Starbucks. EU nations meanwhile are tightening the 'freedom to operate as previously' on US Big Tech companies; and Globally, most countries are looking to rein in 'clever' corporate tax structures that have reduced their capacity to collect taxes from foreign companies using tax havens like the Cayman Islands. US companies would especially be hit were this campaign to succeed. Only eight nations remain opposed to a UN tax convention aimed at tightening up on these practices: the five 'Anglo Saxons' – the US, the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – plus Japan, South Korea and Israel. Forty-three percent of 2023's estimated tax losses were attributed to companies operating out of these eight countries. Looking forward, it is hard to see the trend by which US S&P 500 companies grew their foreign EBIT margins from 11% to 16% over 2000 to 2020 continuing in Trump's World. Given that foreign margin growth contributed ALL of the overall corporate margin growth in this period, even if this trend merely stalled and did not reverse, it would put a huge dampener on the prospects for future profit growth and so future share price performance for many of the S&P 500's leading companies. Rocky road ahead for US Bonds too The above addresses the investment prospects for the asset class that draws the lion's share of market commentary: US equities. US Bonds – which attract twice as much foreign capital as do US equities – face even cloudier prospects. After a four-decade-long bull market, from 1981 to 2020, when bond yields fell from just under 16% to just over 2%, the US bond market has since hit a four-year 'bad patch'. Non-Western central banks have been diversifying away from US Bonds into, among other assets, gold. If US inflation were to rise, prompting the Fed to raise rates, and if the US dollar were to continue to see its value erode, foreign investors in the US Bond market might yet conclude it was losing its historic attractiveness. Were the US dollar's 'store of value' attributes to be compromised (and if the idea of Stephen Miran, chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, that foreign holdings of US financial assets should be taxed would do just that), this would further weaken its reserve currency status. Threatening to confiscate US dollar assets, as the US did to Colombia, will not help either. Any weaponising of the US dollar will detract from its 'store of value' attractiveness. Mea culpa: 'I' did it too! The other actor I must call out who played a part in the Murder of Manufacturing in America is… 'myself'… or at last the profession of which I am a part: economics and the mainstream thinking that it has proselytised after World War 2. This thinking has especially dominated Anglo Saxon practice and, as it is now becoming clearer, it has a lot to answer for. In a word, modern macroeconomic thinking has been shot through by what is called 'Keynesianism'… except that the current manifestation of the latter doctrine is not true to its academic origins. John Maynard Keynes would not have recognised the incontinence of the fiscal spending that is now the 'go to' solution for nearly all Western economic challenges. (Even previously more prudent Germany is now joining this club.) Yes, Keynes recommended unfunded fiscal spending, but only when times were bad: echoing David Hume, the matching bookend to his thinking was that once the economy improved, the prior borrowing that was needed to jumpstart the economy should be repaid. Keynes believed running the economic engine with the fiscal choke permanently pulled out would eventually flood that engine and make new economic growth much harder to achieve. Sound familiar in 2025? In 1962, Joan Robinson was the first to call out the twisted application of JMK's thinking, especially as it was manifesting itself in the universities of the US. She noted that 'the bastard Keynesian doctrine (that) evolved in the United States… (was) floating on the wings of the almighty dollar'. Her withering comment was made even before Valery Giscard d'Estaing's 1965 'exorbitant privilege' charge that the US was – by printing US dollars to cover its deficit spending, both current account and budget – living beyond its means, but still getting by courtesy of the kindness of foreign strangers/savers. In the 1960s, Britain – which mistakenly thought sterling still had reserve currency status – tried following this American example. Result? Periodic hiccoughs. The 1967 Sterling Crisis was followed by the pound's slide from 1972 to 1976 (which ended with Britain calling in the IMF) and then the sorry experience of UK currency going into (1987) and being ejected from (1992) Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism. Together, these traumas underlined just how weak Britain's exorbitant privilege had become compared with that of the US. Still, by the 1990s, with free capital flows accepted as mainstream behaviour in much of the world, funding deficits in part by borrowing from abroad, became easier… even, by the mid-1990s, for Britain. Keynesianism as it had become was now one-sided demand management on steroids: never mind fiscal overspending if foreigners would help finance it. The demand side was all that mattered; little attention was paid to the supply side… which in any case, if regarded as industrial manufacturing, had from the 1980s rapidly migrated abroad anyway. Many Western governments paid no heed to that which was no longer there! Manufacturing was now treated as was agriculture: yesterday's focus. As Vaclav Smil was to bemoan, for the Anglo Saxons and especially the US, from now on it was to be all about services. And these services were often underpinned by government spending. In 2024, the US government provided more 'credit' (often interest free and non-repayable) than banks. Also in 2024, two-thirds of the US's 2.2 million jobs created were in healthcare and government; furthermore 80% of all post-Covid US jobs have been created directly by the US government or with its financial support. And despite claims to the contrary, those in services nearly always import far more than they can earn by selling their services abroad (even when tourism services are added in). Especially among the Anglo Saxons, as manufacturing declined and their service-oriented economies expanded, this meant they ended up running larger and larger current account deficits. DM
Times
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
AI Agatha Christie adds suspense to BBC crime-writing course
Aspiring crime writers will have the chance to learn from Agatha Christie's storytelling techniques — thanks to artificial intelligence. The Agatha Christie estate and BBC Maestro, the corporation's online learning platform, have announced a £79 course for novelists. It will draw on the processes the multibillion-selling author, who died nearly 50 years ago, used to write her 66 detective novels, including And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, 14 short story collections and The Mousetrap, the world's longest-running play. Christie, who died in 1976 aged 85, has been played by the actress, Vivien Keene, with CGI effects used to modify her face and voice to create a digital reincarnation of the author. The 'AI
Scoop
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Sold-Out Hit Returns: Murder On The Orient Express Back On Stage Feb 2026
Press Release – Elephant Publicity With just a handful of single tickets left for its current season, Auckland Theatre Company's Murder on the Orient Express has officially become the biggest box office hit in the company's history. Now, due to overwhelming demand, audiences will have a second chance to climb aboard the world's most infamous train. The return season of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig, will play at the ASB Waterfront Theatre from 7 – 15 February 2026. Tickets are on sale now. All aboard – again! Directed by acclaimed theatre-maker Shane Bosher, this spectacular production plunges audiences into the glamorous and dangerous world of 1930s Europe. With its full-throttle mix of intrigue, danger, rich period detail and sharp humour, the show has struck a chord with Auckland theatregoers and critics. 'Murder on the Orient Express is a delightful piece of entertainment, two hours of pure escapism produced to the highest quality, and the exact type of blockbuster-esque theatre it would be great to see more of.' – NZ Herald 'With a set that dazzles, a cast that delights, and direction that keeps things snappy — providing everything right there on the stage.' – Blackguard Media Reviews 'This Murder on the Orient Express manages to get the balance of the story just right, paying homage to the brilliance of Agatha Christie while expertly using comedy and a light-hearted irreverence to create a crackingly good whodunnit.' – Andrew Whiteside '…pure, unadulterated entertainment.' – NZ Arts Review 'A madcap romp of a whodunnit full of red herrings, high drama and hijinks; escalating to a very Agatha Christie climax.' – Red Raven The production features a killer cast led by the iconic Cameron Rhodes as Hercule Poirot, joined by an ensemble of Aotearoa's finest: Rima Te Wiata, Jennifer Ludlam, Mirabai Pease, Sophie Henderson, and Bronwyn Ensor, with Mayen Mehta, Ryan O'Kane, Jordan Selwyn and Edwin Wright rounding out the lineup of suspects. Agatha Christie's masterpiece remains one of the greatest whodunnits ever written – a locked-room mystery packed with unforgettable characters, jaw-dropping twists, and exquisite suspense. And in this sumptuous production, every detail – from the train carriages to the costuming – is a ticket to another era. This return season invites both first-time sleuths and returning fans to experience the theatrical event everyone's talking about. Whether you've solved the mystery or not, you'll want to be part of the conspiracy. DON'T MISS THE RETURN OF A SELL-OUT SMASH AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
Scoop
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Scoop
Sold-Out Hit Returns: Murder On The Orient Express Back On Stage Feb 2026
With just a handful of single tickets left for its current season, Auckland Theatre Company's Murder on the Orient Express has officially become the biggest box office hit in the company's history. Now, due to overwhelming demand, audiences will have a second chance to climb aboard the world's most infamous train. The return season of Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig, will play at the ASB Waterfront Theatre from 7 – 15 February 2026. Tickets are on sale now. All aboard – again! Directed by acclaimed theatre-maker Shane Bosher, this spectacular production plunges audiences into the glamorous and dangerous world of 1930s Europe. With its full-throttle mix of intrigue, danger, rich period detail and sharp humour, the show has struck a chord with Auckland theatregoers and critics. 'Murder on the Orient Express is a delightful piece of entertainment, two hours of pure escapism produced to the highest quality, and the exact type of blockbuster-esque theatre it would be great to see more of.' – NZ Herald 'With a set that dazzles, a cast that delights, and direction that keeps things snappy — providing everything right there on the stage." - Blackguard Media Reviews "This Murder on the Orient Express manages to get the balance of the story just right, paying homage to the brilliance of Agatha Christie while expertly using comedy and a light-hearted irreverence to create a crackingly good whodunnit." - Andrew Whiteside "…pure, unadulterated entertainment." - NZ Arts Review "A madcap romp of a whodunnit full of red herrings, high drama and hijinks; escalating to a very Agatha Christie climax." - Red Raven The production features a killer cast led by the iconic Cameron Rhodes as Hercule Poirot, joined by an ensemble of Aotearoa's finest: Rima Te Wiata, Jennifer Ludlam, Mirabai Pease, Sophie Henderson, and Bronwyn Ensor, with Mayen Mehta, Ryan O'Kane, Jordan Selwyn and Edwin Wright rounding out the lineup of suspects. Agatha Christie's masterpiece remains one of the greatest whodunnits ever written – a locked-room mystery packed with unforgettable characters, jaw-dropping twists, and exquisite suspense. And in this sumptuous production, every detail – from the train carriages to the costuming – is a ticket to another era. This return season invites both first-time sleuths and returning fans to experience the theatrical event everyone's talking about. Whether you've solved the mystery or not, you'll want to be part of the conspiracy. DON'T MISS THE RETURN OF A SELL-OUT SMASH AGATHA CHRISTIE'S MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS
The Guardian
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘You have to be taken inside Poirot's brain': Ken Ludwig on the secret to adapting Agatha Christie
If you ever face a quiz question about the most performed theatre writers in the world, likely to have a play on somewhere every day, William Shakespeare, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Agatha Christie are all reliable answers but a fourth may surprise you: Ken Ludwig. He also has intriguing connections with the other three. The popularity that made the American wealthy enough to have donated £1m to the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust is partly due – apart from his own much-revived comedies, Lend Me a Tenor (1986) and Moon Over Buffalo (1995) – to Christie. Ludwig's 2017 adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express has had hundreds of productions and is currently touring the UK. We meet when he is in London for a workshop on a second Hercule Poirot adaptation, Death on the Nile, which premieres in September. This lucrative sideline began a decade ago with a phone call from Mathew Prichard, Christie's grandson: 'It was out of the blue. He told me that, for the first time in many decades, they wanted to adapt one of the novels for the stage and I could have free choice. I chose Murder on the Orient Express because it was the most popular title and so I thought more people would go to see it.' Did it worry him that the novel also has one of her most famous solutions? 'That's been interesting. Real Agatha Christie fans will know but I think 80-90 per cent of the audience doesn't: they're people who like mysteries or just want a good night at the theatre. When we did Murder on the Orient Express, it surprised me how surprised people were at how it turned out.' That play involved putting a train on stage and now Death on the Nile requires a boat. Does he not like designers? He laughs: 'I trust them! Sometimes, writing plays, I think 'that's going to be hard to stage' but then I think: no, no, theatre artists love challenges. So now I think: just go and figure it out! They come up with solutions you could never have imagined.' Murder on the Orient Express is just under 300 pages and Death on the Nile just over but Ludwig has a clear sense that both should yield two hours of stage time: 'The books are not novellas but not epics. We went to [James Graham's] Dear England last night and that's two hours 50 minutes and worth every second. But, if you did that with a mystery that's supposed to be moving along swiftly, that would be pretty hard to sustain.' Given the complexity of Christie's plotting, does he draw maps and time schemes? 'I don't do that. But, whether it's the adaptations or my own plays, I take enormous numbers of notes on legal pads because they are longer than usual note pads.' Turning to murder from comedy, Ludwig was struck by the structural similarities: 'Maybe that's why they are the two things I've done most of. In comedy and in cosy crime, all these things go up in the air, come down again, break but then eventually everything is ordered and calm again.' Murder on the Orient Express has a 40-minute explanatory monologue for Poirot – meticulously delivered by Henry Goodman at Chichester in 2022. Such pressure on the audience's attention, Ludwig admits, 'is a risk. But it was born out of practicality … You have to be taken inside Poirot's brain and how he ruled out all those possibilities before getting to the point of accusation.' Goodman brought out on stage – as did Kenneth Branagh in his movie versions of the two books – that Poirot is ridiculous in some ways but also has a brain like Sherlock Holmes. 'Right. And that's the genius of the character. He seems like this fussy, pompous fellow who's not going to cause you much trouble and then suddenly he's got ya!' Working on the books, Ludwig says he has never been sure why Christie made Poirot Belgian, so I try out my pet theory: had this punctilious genius been English, he would have been too close to Sherlock Holmes. 'That makes sense. And he usually has a Watson-like sidekick as well: Colonel Hastings.' The writer is unsure why the estate chose him. Despite German heritage – 'it's a more common name in the US than here, there's a Ludwig drum kits company and an air conditioning one' – his appeal to Christie's heirs is likely to have been anglophile tastes: he has written adaptations of Sherlock Holmes stories and plays based on Shakespeare. He is currently finishing Garrick's Folly about the actor David Garrick's staging of the Shakespearean Jubilee in Stratford in 1769. 'What I love most is the English tradition of classic comedy that extends from Shakespeare through Congreve and Goldsmith right through to Coward.' He also includes the Irish writers Wilde and Sheridan. 'So I became an Anglophile and also studied at Cambridge University. Those comedies in English are my core. I'd go through those plays and take notes, trying to figure out how they worked beat by beat. How does Sheridan get to the amazing screen scene in The School for Scandal? I still have about a hundred of those breakdowns in my office.' As shown by the seven-figure donation to Stratford-upon-Avon heritage, Shakespeare is his absolute favourite, especially the comedies. While in London, he was planning to see Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell in Much Ado About Nothing. I warn him that the subplot about comic constables has been cut. 'Well,' he shrugs. 'Of the dozens and dozens of productions of Much Ado I've seen, I've never seen Dogberry and Verges funny. It should be a crack comedy duo but it's hard to land. Remember the Ken Branagh movie way back? [1993] Boy, they were a disaster in that!' Apart from his reading and education, Ludwig's love of this country was also shaped by his career. He had a success in the West End before on Broadway, with Lend Me a Tenor, a farce in which, due to a misunderstanding, two identically dressed singers both believe that they are singing the lead in Verdi's Otello. The play previously had a small American production under the title Opera Buffa. 'The [English] director David Gilmore liked the play,' Ludwig recalls, 'and said he'd like to show it to a producer friend of his. And I got a little pompous and said I also had friends who were producers. And Gilmore said his friend was Andrew Lloyd Webber. So I said: 'Sure, show it to him!' Andrew loved it, but when I met him, he said he wanted to change the name because theatre audiences would never come to see a show with 'opera' in the title.' A lethally timed comic pause. 'Only later did I discover that he was writing The Phantom of the Opera at the time.' An alternative title for Ludwig's play proved elusive until Richard Stilgoe, Lloyd Webber's then lyricist, told him about an expression of the London impecunious: 'Lend me a tenner.' 'Andrew loved it,' the playwright says, 'and, once everyone had explained it to me, so did I.' But the decision led to a curious culture clash: in the UK, people passing the theatre smile at the title; in the US, no one has any idea what it means. The comedy of two Otellos – both wearing the blackface make-up that was standard for white opera singers at the time – caused amusement but some actors, producers, critics and theatregoers also took offence and an alteration was made. 'The minute I became aware that people were worried, I changed the opera within the play to Pagliacci and that's the only version that should be done now.' Is it harder now to write comedy because of increased sensitivity about offence? 'I have been conscious of that changing.' Four years ago, he rewrote Lend Me a Tenor as Lend Me a Soprano because of how male-centric the first play was: 'I turned the three main drivers of the story into women. It's roaring around the United States.' Comedy writers at their desk divide between those who imagine the laughs and those who provide them. Which is Ludwig? 'I have to confess that maybe once a day something will come up and I just laugh until I fall out of my chair. Unfortunately, no audience ever reacts in quite the same way.' Death on the Nile starts its UK tour in Salford on 26 September. Murder on the Orient Express is touring until 3 May.
