As we emerge from COVID-19’s lockdowns, there will be many new features to the landscapes of our lives. The most significant will be the shifting economic path from the capitalism of interdependent free trade to the mercantilism of independent economic nationalism.

To those who study the future, the COVID-19 pandemic is a singularity — an event, usually unanticipated, that fundamentally upends the way we live. In other words, it is a major paradigm shift.

One classic example is the mass production of the automobile early in the last century, shifting transportation from organic sources (horses) to mechanical alternatives (cars). A more recent case is the development of the Information Superhighway in the 1980s that ushered in the world of the personal computer in which we now live.

The COVID-19 pandemic originated late last fall in Wuhan, China. Wuhan is a city in Central China with 10 million people and a major transportation hub for domestic rail travel and international air flights. It was also the host of an international athletic meet and a Chinese New Year celebration that attracted tens of thousands of tourists who then unwittingly spread the deadly new virus rapidly across the globe.

For whatever reasons, both the Chinese communist government and the United Nations’ World Health Organization failed to alert the world in sufficient time to stop this spread. As a result, it has now reached literally every country in the world.

At this writing, there are more than 3 million COVID-19 cases and more than 200,000 deaths worldwide. The United States is the world’s leader with in excess of 1 million cases and about 60,000 deaths.

To break the spread of this pandemic, stay-at-home orders have been imposed for individuals and shutdowns for most nonessential businesses (variously defined) for the past six to eight weeks. As we emerge from the wreckage, what we behold are eerily invisible societies and ruined economies.

In the United States, there are nearly 30 million unemployed and a contraction of the economy not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

From these horrendous statistics, there is an automatic compulsion to assign blame. Since President Trump is at the national helm, it is easy to blame him, and his sub-par performance at the daily White House press conferences has not helped. If he was a little slow to recognize the threat of COVID-19, Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Charles Schumer and Andrew Cuomo were no faster.

If blame is to be pinned on anyone, it must be on the communist government of China, which withheld information on the pandemic for far too long. And, bluntly, the World Health Organization was complicit in this silence.

In truth, we have much to be proud of in the American response. Under the capable leadership of Vice President Mike Pence, the COVID-19 Task Force has brought before the American public the reassuring medical expertise of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. For all the bitter partisanship to our politics, a welcome bipartisanship between Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress, together with the White House, has enacted several pieces of legislation that has brought some $3 trillion of financial relief to individuals and businesses.

Further, government and private industry are cooperating to achieve massive production shifts — like General Motors’ switch from making cars to manufacturing ventilators in just weeks — at a level of coordination not seen since World War II.

In confronting the COVID-19 singularity, three new features immediately come to mind. One is a migration from crowded, vulnerable cities to the safety of small-town America. Another is a dramatic increase in the reliance on the internet for employment, retail spending, education and even health care, and away from the brick-and-mortar settings of person-to-person interactions.

The most far-reaching of this paradigm shift, however, will be the rise of mercantilism at the expense of free trade liberalism. Since much of our pre-COVID-19 prosperity came from this interdependence of resources, labor and capital to the least costly place of production, this may seem strange.

The beneficiary of this “free” trade was the global consumer who enjoyed the reasonable prices that came from cheap imports. The flaw to this “prosperous” system was that most of the global supply chains, and especially that of medical supplies and equipment, led to China. Indeed, by 2020, fully half of all global manufacturing is “made in China.” The flaw lies in the loss of independence, both economic and political, to the winner of such interdependence.

The father of mercantilism, Friedrich List (1789-1846), contended that an industrial economy was the bedrock of national power, and that the goal of any economy was to achieve trade surpluses to preserve the nation’s economic independence and political sovereignty. Indeed, such mercantilism has been the guiding light to China’s massive growth and trade surpluses all over the world. Hopefully, rising from the invisible devastation of COVID-19 will be a visible counteracting forest of signs saying “made in the USA.”

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• How do this relate to the 16^th century theory of mercantilism?

Key information for the Plant City Division (PCD) of Barkley Industries for 2019 are as follows: Revenues $15,000,000 Operating Income 1,800,000 Total Assets 10,000,000 PCD managers are evaluated and rewarded on the basis of ROI defined as operating income divided by total assets. Barkley Industries expects its divisions to increase ROI each year. Next year, 2020, appears to be a difficult year for PCD. PCD had planned a new investment to improve quality but, in view of poor economic conditions, has postponed the investment. ROI for 2020 was certain to decrease if PCD had made the investment. Management is now considering ways to meet its target ROI of 20% for next year. It anticipates revenues to be steady at $15 million in 2020.

Required: (a) Calculate PCD’s return on sales and ROI for 2019.

(b) (1) By how much would PCD need to cut costs in 2020 to achieve its target ROI of 20%, assuming no change in total assets between 2019 and 2020?

(2) By how much would PCD need to decrease total assets in 2020 to achieve its target ROI of 20%, assuming no change in operating income between 2019 and 2020?

(c) Calculate PCD’s Residual Income (RI)* in 2019, assuming a required rate of return on investment of 15%.

(d) PCD wants to increase RI by 50% in 2020. Assuming it could cut costs by $45,000 in 2020, by how much would PCD need to decrease total assets in 2020?

(e) Barkley Industries is concerned that the focus on cost cutting, asset sales and no new investments will have an adverse long-run effect on PCD’s customers. Yet Barkley wants PCD to meet its financial goals. What other measurements, if any do you recommend that Barkley use? Explain briefly. * Residual Income = Operating Income – (Total Assets x Required Rate of Return) [Residual Income as a performance measure has the advantage of motivating managers to act in the best interest of the company as a whole.]

Presented below are two independent situations related to future taxable and deductible amounts resulting from temporary differences existing at December 31, 2020. 1. Larkspur Co. has developed the following schedule of future taxable and deductible amounts. 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Taxable amounts $400 $400 $400 $400 $400 Deductible amount — — — (2,200 ) 2. Cullumber Co. has the following schedule of future taxable and deductible amounts. 2021 2022 2023 2024 Taxable amounts $400 $400 $400 $400 Deductible amount — — (2,300 ) — Both Larkspur Co. and Cullumber Co. have taxable income of $3,900 in 2020 and expect to have taxable income in all future years. The tax rates enacted as of the beginning of 2020 are 30% for 2020–2023 and 35% for years thereafter. All of the underlying temporary differences relate to noncurrent assets and liabilities. 1. Compute the net amount of deferred income taxes to be reported at the end of 2020, and indicate how it should be classified on the balance sheet for situation one.

2. Compute the net amount of deferred income taxes to be reported at the end of 2020, and indicate how it should be classified on the balance sheet for situation two.

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D4. Discuss whether internally generated intangible assets should be treated in the same way as acquired intangible assets.

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Presented below is the comparative balance sheet for Wildhorse Inc., a private company reporting under ASPE, at December 31, 2021, and 2020:

Prepare a cash flow statement for the year using the direct method.