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What Is the Outlook for China’s External Surplus?

The sharp slowdown in China’s property sector has reignited debate over the country’s future role as a net provider of savings to the global economy….

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The sharp slowdown in China’s property sector has reignited debate over the country’s future role as a net provider of savings to the global economy. The debate revolves around whether a sustained decline in property investment will spur a long-term increase in China’s current account surplus, given  the country’s high savings rate. However, China’s rapidly aging population presents opposing forces that complicate this story. The shift of a large share of its population from working life to retirement will reduce savings supply even as a shrinking labor force will reduce investment demand. In this post, we focus on the demographic part of the story and find that this force will exert considerable downward pressure on China’s current account surplus in coming years.

Secular Decline in China’s External Balance Upended by the Pandemic

The current account balance (CAB) is the broadest measure of a country’s trade balance, encompassing the balance on goods and services, net income from overseas investments, and net transfers. As an accounting identity, the CAB is also equal to the gap between domestic savings and domestic investment. A country with a CAB surplus, such as China, places its extra savings in foreign financial markets, making it a net lender to the rest of the world. A country with a CAB deficit, such as the U.S., relies on foreign savings to finance part of its investment spending, making it a net borrower from the rest of the world.

Before the pandemic China’s CAB had been in pronounced secular decline. The chart below shows the CAB and a close proxy as shares of GDP. The blue line is the CAB itself. The red line is the goods and services balance—the CAB excluding net income on overseas investments and net transfers—as this variable is available over a longer period.

China’s External Surplus Shrank Before Pandemic

 Liberty Street Economics chart showing China’s current account balance and the goods and services balance as a percent of GDP from 1952 to 2017.
Sources: NBS and SAFE via CEIC.

China’s CAB remained close to balance prior to the early 1980s, due to the country being largely closed to foreign capital and goods markets. It became far more volatile when economic reforms were initiated during that decade. The picture changed still more dramatically after 1990 when China’s modern reform period began, and the country became more integrated into global capital and goods markets—a development exemplified by China’s admission into the WTO in 2001. China’s surplus peaked at 10 percent of GDP in 2007. It then began a precipitous decline, falling to below 1 percent of GDP by 2018, and leading many analysts to conclude that China was on the verge of flipping to becoming a deficit country.  

The pandemic disrupted this trend. Domestic restrictions that suppressed household consumption, booming exports given China’s relatively early reopening, and plummeting outbound travel caused the CAB to swell to nearly 2 percent of GDP. The question we want to address is whether the pre-pandemic downward trend will resume once the dust settles. A strong argument can be made that China’s investment rate remains too high, and that falling investment will lead to larger surpluses. (Recall that the CAB is the difference between saving and investment.)  At the same time, other forces could lead to lower household, corporate, and government savings.

Demographics Play an Important Role in the Balance Between Saving and Investment

Although a country’s savings-investment balance is influenced by a myriad of cyclical and policy factors, demographic factors can play a powerful role. The reason lies in the differential impact of population age structure on savings supply and investment demand. The intuition is as follows. Saving supply should be positively tied to the share of mature adults, through its connection with retirement needs. (Conversely, higher child or elderly population shares should be tied to lower savings, since these populations consume while generating little income.)  Investment demand should be positively tied to the share of young adults, through its connection with labor force growth. (Conversely, negative demographic pressure on investment should emerge as the labor force ages and employment growth slows or even turns negative.) So long as a country is not closed to international capital flows—thus forcing the current account to remain balanced—differences in the timing of these saving and investment effects should lead to demographically-induced changes in the current account.

China’s demographic profile is undergoing profound change, with population aging occurring at a pace never before seen for a country at its income level. As shown in the chart below, China is now well past its peak “demographic dividend”—the ratio of its working-age population to its population of young and old dependents. Moreover, this is occurring at a much lower income level than observed in other countries. (In fact, China’s working-age population is declining not only as a percent of the total but also in absolute terms.) China’s outlier status is starkest at the upper tail of the age distribution. The share of China’s population over 65 years old is currently about 12 percent, even though China’s per capita income is only about one-half of Japan’s when it reached this milestone in 1989.

China’s Demographic Dividend Is Falling Despite Relatively Low Income Level

Liberty Street Economics chart showing China’s falling demographic dividend compared to South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan. China is now well past its peak demographic dividend. Moreover, this is occurring at a much lower income level than observed in other countries.
Sources: United Nations, Penn World Tables, and authors’ calculations.
Notes: Demographic dividend is calculated as ratio of working population to young (0-14) and old population (65+). Per capita income shows income at purchasing power parity calculated from PWT. Years shown are 1950 – 2019 depending on availability.

Empirical Work Points to Downward Pressure on China’s External Balance

To check how the intuition holds up empirically, we follow the methodology of Higgins (1998).  In particular, we estimate statistical models that treat savings, investment, and the CAB (measured as shares of GDP) as functions of the following explanatory variables: population age shares, productivity growth, the relative price of investment goods, and fixed country-specific characteristics. (Our data set is comprised of 142 countries and covers 1950 to 2019.)  Our interest in this post is on the role played by the age structure variables.

The three panels in the chart below show the results of this analysis. Each panel shows the amount that saving, investment, and the CAB change, as a percent of GDP, per a 1 percentage point change in the share of the age cohort shown on the horizontal axis (holding other variables constant). Saving coefficients lift into positive territory around the early-30s, peak at around age 50, and then turn negative starting around 65. Those for investment turn positive and peak at a much earlier age, and then turn down and eventually becomes negative again. The net result of these shifts in saving and investment is demographic “pressure” on a country’s CAB, shown in the third panel. This pressure is initially negative for young populations, positive from around the mid- to late-30s, peaks in the mid-50s, and then turns down and is negative again in the older age cohorts.

Demographic Age Structure Has Differential Effects on Saving, Investment, and the Current Account

A three-panel chart showing how China’s demographic age structure has differential effects on saving, investment, and the current account.
Sources: Penn World Tables, United Nations World Population Prospects, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and authors’ calculations.
Note: Vertical lines show 1 standard deviation bootstrapped confidence intervals.

With these coefficients in hand, one can use historical data and projections of China’s population age distribution to get an idea of how this demographic pressure has influenced its CAB in the past, and how the CAB may evolve in coming decades. The chart below shows the current account balance alongside the pressure coming from demographics, both historically and in prospect using population projections from the United Nations. This pressure is calculated as a cumulative change since 1950.

Demographic Forces Will Reduce Surpluses

Liberty Street Economics chart showing China’s current account balance alongside the pressure coming from demographics since 1952, both historically and in prospect using population projections from the United Nations.
Sources: NBS and SAFE via CEIC.
Note: The current account splices the goods and services balance from the national accounts prior to 1982 to the current account balance from the balance of payments from 1982 onward.

The chart shows that during the first thirty years demographic pressure on the CAB was increasingly negative. This suggests that China’s demographic profile would have been contributing to a CAB deficit during this period—and that the country could have benefited from a higher level of investment if it had been financially open and able to borrow from abroad. These demographic pressures hit an inflection point just as the reform period began in the early 1980s, and then went into overdrive beginning in the 1990s, contributing to the boom in CAB surpluses. Finally, demographic pressure hit a downward inflection point just before the pandemic. The downward weight on China’s external balance is projected to grow steadily more heavy over the next two decades. In fact, holding other influences constant and starting from its pre-pandemic level, changes in age structure could be enough to drag China’s CAB into deficit only a few years from now. If demography is destiny, the country’s days as a net lender to the rest of the world appear numbered.

Conclusion

Our analysis of the potential impact of demographic change on China’s current account should not be taken as a prediction. While the demographic coefficients in our statistical model appear estimated fairly precisely, they come with a margin of error that is transmitted into the projections.

More important, by design, our projections only consider the impact of demographic variables, abstracting from other cyclical and policy factors that can influence the CAB. Indeed, we began this post by referring to popular speculation that a real estate crash in China might cause a collapse in investment, swelling the CAB. A risk in the opposite direction comes from the country’s low ratio of household consumption to GDP. Measures to liberalize consumers’ access to credit markets could unlock suppressed household consumption, leading to a decline in savings and additional downward weight on the CAB. Equally, new restrictions on capital outflows could put a lid on the magnitude of future current account deficits.

The most we can say is that a continued role for China as net lender to the rest of the world would involve a long march up a steep demographic hill. Even if the authorities were to succeed in boosting birthrates—through relaxation of the one-child policy and other incentives, so far with little success—the resultant increase in children and young workers would put further downward pressure on the CAB relative to the estimates presented in this post.

Hunter L. Clark is an international policy advisor in International Studies in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group. 

Matthew Higgins is an economic research advisor in International Studies in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Research and Statistics Group.

How to cite this post:
Hunter L. Clark and Matthew Higgins, “What Is the Outlook for China’s External Surplus?,” Federal Reserve Bank of New York Liberty Street Economics, October 17, 2022, https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2022/10/what-is-the-outlook-for-chinas-external-surplus/.


Disclaimer
The views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the author(s).

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Red Candle In The Wind

Red Candle In The Wind

By Benjamin PIcton of Rabobank

February non-farm payrolls superficially exceeded market expectations on Friday by…

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Red Candle In The Wind

By Benjamin PIcton of Rabobank

February non-farm payrolls superficially exceeded market expectations on Friday by printing at 275,000 against a consensus call of 200,000. We say superficially, because the downward revisions to prior months totalled 167,000 for December and January, taking the total change in employed persons well below the implied forecast, and helping the unemployment rate to pop two-ticks to 3.9%. The U6 underemployment rate also rose from 7.2% to 7.3%, while average hourly earnings growth fell to 0.2% m-o-m and average weekly hours worked languished at 34.3, equalling pre-pandemic lows.

Undeterred by the devil in the detail, the algos sprang into action once exchanges opened. Market darling NVIDIA hit a new intraday high of $974 before (presumably) the humans took over and sold the stock down more than 10% to close at $875.28. If our suspicions are correct that it was the AIs buying before the humans started selling (no doubt triggering trailing stops on the way down), the irony is not lost on us.

The 1-day chart for NVIDIA now makes for interesting viewing, because the red candle posted on Friday presents quite a strong bearish engulfing signal. Volume traded on the day was almost double the 15-day simple moving average, and similar price action is observable on the 1-day charts for both Intel and AMD. Regular readers will be aware that we have expressed incredulity in the past about the durability the AI thematic melt-up, so it will be interesting to see whether Friday’s sell off is just a profit-taking blip, or a genuine trend reversal.

AI equities aside, this week ought to be important for markets because the BTFP program expires today. That means that the Fed will no longer be loaning cash to the banking system in exchange for collateral pledged at-par. The KBW Regional Banking index has so far taken this in its stride and is trading 30% above the lows established during the mini banking crisis of this time last year, but the Fed’s liquidity facility was effectively an exercise in can-kicking that makes regional banks a sector of the market worth paying attention to in the weeks ahead. Even here in Sydney, regulators are warning of external risks posed to the banking sector from scheduled refinancing of commercial real estate loans following sharp falls in valuations.

Markets are sending signals in other sectors, too. Gold closed at a new record-high of $2178/oz on Friday after trading above $2200/oz briefly. Gold has been going ballistic since the Friday before last, posting gains even on days where 2-year Treasury yields have risen. Gold bugs are buying as real yields fall from the October highs and inflation breakevens creep higher. This is particularly interesting as gold ETFs have been recording net outflows; suggesting that price gains aren’t being driven by a retail pile-in. Are gold buyers now betting on a stagflationary outcome where the Fed cuts without inflation being anchored at the 2% target? The price action around the US CPI release tomorrow ought to be illuminating.

Leaving the day-to-day movements to one side, we are also seeing further signs of structural change at the macro level. The UK budget last week included a provision for the creation of a British ISA. That is, an Individual Savings Account that provides tax breaks to savers who invest their money in the stock of British companies. This follows moves last year to encourage pension funds to head up the risk curve by allocating 5% of their capital to unlisted investments.

As a Hail Mary option for a government cruising toward an electoral drubbing it’s a curious choice, but it’s worth highlighting as cash-strapped governments increasingly see private savings pools as a funding solution for their spending priorities.

Of course, the UK is not alone in making creeping moves towards financial repression. In contrast to announcements today of increased trade liberalisation, Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers has in the recent past flagged his interest in tapping private pension savings to fund state spending priorities, including defence, public housing and renewable energy projects. Both the UK and Australia appear intent on finding ways to open up the lungs of their economies, but government wants more say in directing private capital flows for state goals.

So, how far is the blurring of the lines between free markets and state planning likely to go? Given the immense and varied budgetary (and security) pressures that governments are facing, could we see a re-up of WWII-era Victory bonds, where private investors are encouraged to do their patriotic duty by directly financing government at negative real rates?

That would really light a fire under the gold market.

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 19:00

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Trump “Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes”, RFK Jr. Says

Trump "Clearly Hasn’t Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President…

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Trump "Clearly Hasn't Learned From His COVID-Era Mistakes", RFK Jr. Says

Authored by Jeff Louderback via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden claimed that COVID vaccines are now helping cancer patients during his State of the Union address on March 7, but it was a response on Truth Social from former President Donald Trump that drew the ire of independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. holds a voter rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Feb. 10, 2024. (Mitch Ranger for The Epoch Times)

During the address, President Biden said: “The pandemic no longer controls our lives. The vaccines that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer, turning setback into comeback. That’s what America does.”

President Trump wrote: “The Pandemic no longer controls our lives. The VACCINES that saved us from COVID are now being used to help beat cancer—turning setback into comeback. YOU’RE WELCOME JOE. NINE-MONTH APPROVAL TIME VS. 12 YEARS THAT IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU.”

An outspoken critic of President Trump’s COVID response, and the Operation Warp Speed program that escalated the availability of COVID vaccines, Mr. Kennedy said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that “Donald Trump clearly hasn’t learned from his COVID-era mistakes.”

“He fails to recognize how ineffective his warp speed vaccine is as the ninth shot is being recommended to seniors. Even more troubling is the documented harm being caused by the shot to so many innocent children and adults who are suffering myocarditis, pericarditis, and brain inflammation,” Mr. Kennedy remarked.

“This has been confirmed by a CDC-funded study of 99 million people. Instead of bragging about its speedy approval, we should be honestly and transparently debating the abundant evidence that this vaccine may have caused more harm than good.

“I look forward to debating both Trump and Biden on Sept. 16 in San Marcos, Texas.”

Mr. Kennedy announced in April 2023 that he would challenge President Biden for the 2024 Democratic Party presidential nomination before declaring his run as an independent last October, claiming that the Democrat National Committee was “rigging the primary.”

Since the early stages of his campaign, Mr. Kennedy has generated more support than pundits expected from conservatives, moderates, and independents resulting in speculation that he could take votes away from President Trump.

Many Republicans continue to seek a reckoning over the government-imposed pandemic lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

President Trump’s defense of Operation Warp Speed, the program he rolled out in May 2020 to spur the development and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines amid the pandemic, remains a sticking point for some of his supporters.

Vice President Mike Pence (L) and President Donald Trump deliver an update on Operation Warp Speed in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Nov. 13, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Operation Warp Speed featured a partnership between the government, the military, and the private sector, with the government paying for millions of vaccine doses to be produced.

President Trump released a statement in March 2021 saying: “I hope everyone remembers when they’re getting the COVID-19 Vaccine, that if I wasn’t President, you wouldn’t be getting that beautiful ‘shot’ for 5 years, at best, and probably wouldn’t be getting it at all. I hope everyone remembers!”

President Trump said about the COVID-19 vaccine in an interview on Fox News in March 2021: “It works incredibly well. Ninety-five percent, maybe even more than that. I would recommend it, and I would recommend it to a lot of people that don’t want to get it and a lot of those people voted for me, frankly.

“But again, we have our freedoms and we have to live by that and I agree with that also. But it’s a great vaccine, it’s a safe vaccine, and it’s something that works.”

On many occasions, President Trump has said that he is not in favor of vaccine mandates.

An environmental attorney, Mr. Kennedy founded Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that aims to end childhood health epidemics by promoting vaccine safeguards, among other initiatives.

Last year, Mr. Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan that ivermectin was suppressed by the FDA so that the COVID-19 vaccines could be granted emergency use authorization.

He has criticized Big Pharma, vaccine safety, and government mandates for years.

Since launching his presidential campaign, Mr. Kennedy has made his stances on the COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccines in general, a frequent talking point.

“I would argue that the science is very clear right now that they [vaccines] caused a lot more problems than they averted,” Mr. Kennedy said on Piers Morgan Uncensored last April.

“And if you look at the countries that did not vaccinate, they had the lowest death rates, they had the lowest COVID and infection rates.”

Additional data show a “direct correlation” between excess deaths and high vaccination rates in developed countries, he said.

President Trump and Mr. Kennedy have similar views on topics like protecting the U.S.-Mexico border and ending the Russia-Ukraine war.

COVID-19 is the topic where Mr. Kennedy and President Trump seem to differ the most.

Former President Donald Trump intended to “drain the swamp” when he took office in 2017, but he was “intimidated by bureaucrats” at federal agencies and did not accomplish that objective, Mr. Kennedy said on Feb. 5.

Speaking at a voter rally in Tucson, where he collected signatures to get on the Arizona ballot, the independent presidential candidate said President Trump was “earnest” when he vowed to “drain the swamp,” but it was “business as usual” during his term.

John Bolton, who President Trump appointed as a national security adviser, is “the template for a swamp creature,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Scott Gottlieb, who President Trump named to run the FDA, “was Pfizer’s business partner” and eventually returned to Pfizer, Mr. Kennedy said.

Mr. Kennedy said that President Trump had more lobbyists running federal agencies than any president in U.S. history.

“You can’t reform them when you’ve got the swamp creatures running them, and I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do something different,” Mr. Kennedy said.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump “did not ask the questions that he should have,” he believes.

President Trump “knew that lockdowns were wrong” and then “agreed to lockdowns,” Mr. Kennedy said.

He also “knew that hydroxychloroquine worked, he said it,” Mr. Kennedy explained, adding that he was eventually “rolled over” by Dr. Anthony Fauci and his advisers.

President Donald Trump greets the crowd before he leaves at the Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit in Washington on Dec. 8, 2020. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

MaryJo Perry, a longtime advocate for vaccine choice and a Trump supporter, thinks votes will be at a premium come Election Day, particularly because the independent and third-party field is becoming more competitive.

Ms. Perry, president of Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights, believes advocates for medical freedom could determine who is ultimately president.

She believes that Mr. Kennedy is “pulling votes from Trump” because of the former president’s stance on the vaccines.

“People care about medical freedom. It’s an important issue here in Mississippi, and across the country,” Ms. Perry told The Epoch Times.

“Trump should admit he was wrong about Operation Warp Speed and that COVID vaccines have been dangerous. That would make a difference among people he has offended.”

President Trump won’t lose enough votes to Mr. Kennedy about Operation Warp Speed and COVID vaccines to have a significant impact on the election, Ohio Republican strategist Wes Farno told The Epoch Times.

President Trump won in Ohio by eight percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. The Ohio Republican Party endorsed President Trump for the nomination in 2024.

“The positives of a Trump presidency far outweigh the negatives,” Mr. Farno said. “People are more concerned about their wallet and the economy.

“They are asking themselves if they were better off during President Trump’s term compared to since President Biden took office. The answer to that question is obvious because many Americans are struggling to afford groceries, gas, mortgages, and rent payments.

“America needs President Trump.”

Multiple national polls back Mr. Farno’s view.

As of March 6, the RealClearPolitics average of polls indicates that President Trump has 41.8 percent support in a five-way race that includes President Biden (38.4 percent), Mr. Kennedy (12.7 percent), independent Cornel West (2.6 percent), and Green Party nominee Jill Stein (1.7 percent).

A Pew Research Center study conducted among 10,133 U.S. adults from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 showed that Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents (42 percent) are more likely than Republicans and GOP-leaning independents (15 percent) to say they have received an updated COVID vaccine.

The poll also reported that just 28 percent of adults say they have received the updated COVID inoculation.

The peer-reviewed multinational study of more than 99 million vaccinated people that Mr. Kennedy referenced in his X post on March 7 was published in the Vaccine journal on Feb. 12.

It aimed to evaluate the risk of 13 adverse events of special interest (AESI) following COVID-19 vaccination. The AESIs spanned three categories—neurological, hematologic (blood), and cardiovascular.

The study reviewed data collected from more than 99 million vaccinated people from eight nations—Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, New Zealand, and Scotland—looking at risks up to 42 days after getting the shots.

Three vaccines—Pfizer and Moderna’s mRNA vaccines as well as AstraZeneca’s viral vector jab—were examined in the study.

Researchers found higher-than-expected cases that they deemed met the threshold to be potential safety signals for multiple AESIs, including for Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), myocarditis, and pericarditis.

A safety signal refers to information that could suggest a potential risk or harm that may be associated with a medical product.

The study identified higher incidences of neurological, cardiovascular, and blood disorder complications than what the researchers expected.

President Trump’s role in Operation Warp Speed, and his continued praise of the COVID vaccine, remains a concern for some voters, including those who still support him.

Krista Cobb is a 40-year-old mother in western Ohio. She voted for President Trump in 2020 and said she would cast her vote for him this November, but she was stunned when she saw his response to President Biden about the COVID-19 vaccine during the State of the Union address.

I love President Trump and support his policies, but at this point, he has to know they [advisers and health officials] lied about the shot,” Ms. Cobb told The Epoch Times.

“If he continues to promote it, especially after all of the hearings they’ve had about it in Congress, the side effects, and cover-ups on Capitol Hill, at what point does he become the same as the people who have lied?” Ms. Cobb added.

“I think he should distance himself from talk about Operation Warp Speed and even admit that he was wrong—that the vaccines have not had the impact he was told they would have. If he did that, people would respect him even more.”

Tyler Durden Mon, 03/11/2024 - 17:00

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There will soon be one million seats on this popular Amtrak route

“More people are taking the train than ever before,” says Amtrak’s Executive Vice President.

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While the size of the United States makes it hard for it to compete with the inter-city train access available in places like Japan and many European countries, Amtrak trains are a very popular transportation option in certain pockets of the country — so much so that the country’s national railway company is expanding its Northeast Corridor by more than one million seats.

Related: This is what it's like to take a 19-hour train from New York to Chicago

Running from Boston all the way south to Washington, D.C., the route is one of the most popular as it passes through the most densely populated part of the country and serves as a commuter train for those who need to go between East Coast cities such as New York and Philadelphia for business.

Veronika Bondarenko captured this photo of New York’s Moynihan Train Hall. 

Veronika Bondarenko

Amtrak launches new routes, promises travelers ‘additional travel options’

Earlier this month, Amtrak announced that it was adding four additional Northeastern routes to its schedule — two more routes between New York’s Penn Station and Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the weekend, a new early-morning weekday route between New York and Philadelphia’s William H. Gray III 30th Street Station and a weekend route between Philadelphia and Boston’s South Station.

More Travel:

According to Amtrak, these additions will increase Northeast Corridor’s service by 20% on the weekdays and 10% on the weekends for a total of one million additional seats when counted by how many will ride the corridor over the year.

“More people are taking the train than ever before and we’re proud to offer our customers additional travel options when they ride with us on the Northeast Regional,” Amtrak Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Eliot Hamlisch said in a statement on the new routes. “The Northeast Regional gets you where you want to go comfortably, conveniently and sustainably as you breeze past traffic on I-95 for a more enjoyable travel experience.”

Here are some of the other Amtrak changes you can expect to see

Amtrak also said that, in the 2023 financial year, the Northeast Corridor had nearly 9.2 million riders — 8% more than it had pre-pandemic and a 29% increase from 2022. The higher demand, particularly during both off-peak hours and the time when many business travelers use to get to work, is pushing Amtrak to invest into this corridor in particular.

To reach more customers, Amtrak has also made several changes to both its routes and pricing system. In the fall of 2023, it introduced a type of new “Night Owl Fare” — if traveling during very late or very early hours, one can go between cities like New York and Philadelphia or Philadelphia and Washington. D.C. for $5 to $15.

As travel on the same routes during peak hours can reach as much as $300, this was a deliberate move to reach those who have the flexibility of time and might have otherwise preferred more affordable methods of transportation such as the bus. After seeing strong uptake, Amtrak added this type of fare to more Boston routes.

The largest distances, such as the ones between Boston and New York or New York and Washington, are available at the lowest rate for $20.

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