[Sounds like our nation is on the deficit side of the column regularly, and not on the earnings side, in spite of your prose “that foreign customers buy in copious amounts.” ]
And yet your phone is powered by Android or iOS. There’s a problem in the way they account for trade - the numbers don’t reflect the value added. Deng Xiaoping complained about this - he said that Nike sneakers assembled in China reflected Chinese value-added of perhaps $5, but the entire wholesale value of $30 was added to Chinese export numbers. He might have been steeped in Marxist doubletalk, but he was no dummy.
Here’s one way to look at this - a bulge bracket lawyer runs an enormous trade deficit with her live-in baby-sitter. She buys the baby-sitter’s services, but the baby-sitter buys none of hers. Will a day come that the chickens come home to roost on this persistent trade deficit? Call me skeptical.
Again the question again remains unanswered, except by asking other questions as if a debate tactic. I asked of the massive 30.4 trillion dollar debt: The article's title argues "the party's over." Are you saying it is not? Leave the parables to another book, please.