Daily Inspiration Quote by Toshihiko Fukui

A technocrat’s sentence that quietly doubles as a warning label. Fukui is describing a world where corporate supply chains have become so internally networked that borders start to behave less like walls and more like sliding doors. “Intra-firm trading” sounds bloodless, but it’s the key: when the same company controls production steps in multiple countries, it can reroute invoices, components, and assembly with minimal friction. Exchange rates stop being abstract market signals and become operational instructions.

The intent is to normalize a structural shift in how globalization actually functions. Fukui isn’t marveling at flexibility for its own sake; he’s mapping how monetary conditions reach the real economy over time. A weaker currency doesn’t just make exports cheaper in a textbook way. It prompts firms to reallocate where they produce, where they book profits, and which subsidiary gets the next investment. That’s what “strengthening the response” really means: currency moves don’t merely change prices; they reshuffle the geography of work.

The subtext is policy-relevant, even if it reads like a footnote. Central banks and finance ministries like predictable transmission mechanisms. Fukui is arguing that global firms, by internalizing trade, can amplify the long-run effects of exchange rate swings. That can make devaluations feel more potent, but it also implies greater sensitivity: exchange-rate volatility can trigger faster, larger relocations of activity than older models anticipate.

Context matters: Fukui, as a high-level Japanese public servant in an era of long stagnation and intense export competition, is speaking from inside a system obsessed with how currency dynamics translate into growth. He’s describing globalization as a lever - and hinting that it can pull back just as easily as it pushes forward.