Posted on 01/15/2018 9:26:59 PM PST by cba123
The trade deficit in the US widened to USD 50.5 billion in November of 2017 from an upwardly revised USD 48.9 billion in October. It is the biggest trade gap since January of 2012 as imports reached a record high on rising demand for consumer goods, cell phones, crude oil and semiconductors. Exports recovered form October's fall and touched a record value on higher sales of capital goods, aircraft and cars. Balance of Trade in the United States averaged -14032.83 USD Million from 1950 until 2017, reaching an all time high of 1946 USD Million in June of 1975 and a record low of -67823 USD Million in August of 2006.
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We now have an all-time record deficit with China.
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
Worst. Ever.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/balance-of-trade
https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html
Let’s wait until the tax cuts take effect.
As late at 2001, the bilateral trade deficit with China was just 83 billion for the entire year.
Now it is approaching 400 billion. At a new all-time record, and getting always worse.
The trade situation with China is TERRIBLE.
Just in 15 years. A whole lot of people sold out America. Not the least of which, our own politicians.
We really, really, really need to bring businesses back to America.
STOP IMPORTING EVERYTHING.
(OK I will stop yelling now)
:D
But somehow, it's good for business. So it seems. I can't say I understand it, but isn't this laissez faire ?
How is it good for business?
An ever growing group of Americans no longer work. Housing is getting ever more expensive. We import EVERYTHING anymore, and we generate terrible deficits in our trade currently.
China is taking over what America used to do. Except they are not a democracy. Our entire philosophy seems to be sell out as much and as fast a possible.
We are even losing our military edge to China, who simply spends, and spends, and spends, and spends, and spends.
How in the world is this good for business?
I’m no economist, but both exports and imports rose. Isn’t this a sign of a heathy economy? A trade deficit, however, counts against GDP.
All I know is our leadership has been exporting US jobs for more than the entire last generation.
Now we are building up China, running a (massive) trade deficit with them, and no longer the manufacturing powerhouse we were one generation ago.
We still make stuff, but nowhere as much as we did. We now import almost all computers (from China). We now import almost all notebooks. Basically everything in every store, is now imported from China.
(I know, I am exaggerating just a bit) But how much, really?
Entire industries we once dominated, are now owned by China.
How in the world, is this good for AMERICA? China, sure it is wonderful. But America, it seems to me, we are giving away the future.
Right now.
No, it is the influence of political ‘pull’. Let the buyer beware is based on due diligence and the best product for the right price wins. The founders never dreamed we would import items that put our own neighbors in the poor house while stuffing the pockets of those with political clout.
Well, it IS business, in the laisseze faire view. No problem. Lots of people don't like it, and haven't liked it, over the years, but the solutions have always been to supress market forces, more or less violently, with variable outcome. Capitalism never goes away.
Right now, capitalism is building up the biggest communist country in world history.
Right now, capitalism is spending the biggest capitalist country in the world, into debt, very quickly.
Something is going to give. Something.
Not sure what. Not sure when. Not sure where.
But this is not sustainable. Not long-term. America needs leadership which is for American businesses once again.
Not Chinese.
Everyone is sold-out. Everyone.
Except (maybe) Trump. He is really the only one, anywhere, who seems at least mostly, to get this.
Maybe.
I understand the economic arguments. They are true, but incomplete.
Economists and politicians talk and act like the US is an economy with a country, not the other way around.
The data that I saw has total imports from China at close to $500 billion, but Mexico and Canada are up there too at close to $300 billion each. The difference is that we export ~$266 billion in goods to Canada and ~$231 billion to Mexico, although only ~$110 billion to China.
We imported around $132 billion in electronic equipment from China, and $100 billion in machinery. I would also bet that whenever China puts a factory in the US, they equip that factory with Chinese machinery, robotics, electronics etc..
This has been the litany of the losers in the Capitalist game forever.
What do you see as the solution? If you can't fight back in the market, what do you do? Of course, you suppress the market, you take control. This is totalitarianism, in one form or another.
Besides the debt and oil situations, moving technology overseas for nearly 50 years led toward another likely solution: a big nukefest.
[And yes, there’s some irony in my comments.]
OK, we’re back to the trade deficit now that a Republican is President. I think it’s on page 54 of the National Socialist playbook.
There is no Constitutional right to “Free Trade” with foreign countries. So get that thought out of your head. As a matter of fact the opposite is the case. The fantastic news is you have free trade between the states codified in the Constitution inside the USA, that should be good enough. Sorry to tell you this but your rights and freedoms end at the border. As it should be.
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