U.S. MERCHANDISE IMPORTS, EXPORTS, AND TRADE DEFICITS: 1940-2003
It looks like it was 1975.
The value of the dollar has declined signficantly since then.
Posted on 02/18/2005 9:55:18 AM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
It is difficult to decide whether the trade figures for 2004 or the Bush Administration's reaction to them indicate the greater danger to the American economy and nation. Last year's trade deficit hit $617.7 billion -- surpassing the record 2003 deficit by 24 percent. The deficit in goods was even higher, at $666.2 billion. The imbalance increased as a share of the economy to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product, up from 4.5 percent in 2003. This is a situation usually associated with underdeveloped countries on the brink of financial collapse.
The Bush Administration is ideologically opposed to doing anything about the deteriorating international situation. It is content to passively accept whatever transnational corporations and foreign governments do to shape the world economy to their advantage. Attempts at positive spin took their most unbelievable form in Treasury Secretary John Snow's testimony to the Senate Budget Committee on February 10. "What those numbers reflect is the fact that the American economy has been doing well relative to other economies," he claimed. "We are importing more from those other economies because we are creating more disposable income."
Yet, according to Commerce Department figures released in January, disposable income by the third quarter of 2004 had increased at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. How does that translate into a 24 percent hike in the trade deficit? Snow apparently assumes that Americans will spend most of any increase in income on imports rather than on American made products. Why would this be true unless American firms are being beaten out by their foreign competitors?
This pattern is not seen elsewhere. Per capita income in Europe and Japan is on a par with America. The European Union actually has a larger combined economy than does the United States, with Japan in third place. Both the EU and Japan run trade surpluses, and in fact use their large gains in the U.S. market to boost their own economic output and income.
China does the same. It is growing three times as fast as the U.S., and its American trade surplus of $162 billion, up by $38 billion from 2003, is a sign of its strength as the rising manufacturing hub of Asia. Beating out the competition in foreign markets is the real sign of successful commerce and government policy, not losing market share to overseas rivals as has been the American case for over a decade.
Here is the fundamental error that has bedeviled political economy for centuries. Is international trade essentially about cooperation or competition? Classical liberals see free trade as creating a world peacefully arraigned by a division of labor and economic integration (a concept of global unity that goes well beyond trade). The Bush administration is in this camp. Those with a more realist or conservative bent see a world based on a more fundamental economic principle, relative scarcity. The first law of economics is that there is never enough to go around; wants are unlimited while the ability to satisfy those wants is limited at any point in time (though it can be increased over time). Thus, there is always competition to gain "the lion's share" of what is available, be it jobs, raw materials, industrial capacity or the means to advance to the next level of prosperity through the accumulation of capital and technology.
Everyone agrees that capitalism is based on competition. Firms are driven to innovate and expand or be left behind by their commercial rivals. What the free traders overlook is that there are societal consequences if the nation's capitalists consistently lose to foreign competitors, or abandon the nation for operations overseas (again in response to competitive pressures).
Americans understood this national aspect of competition during the decades when the United States attained global leadership. By the dawn of the 20th century, America was the largest, most productive economy in the world. In 1902, Brooks Adams published THE NEW EMPIRE proclaiming how American had surpassed Europe as the center of the world economy. While not as well known now as his brother Henry, Brooks was a prominent member of the 4th generation of the illustrious Adams family, counting from Founding Father President John Adams. Brooks and Henry Adams were in the intellectual circle surrounding President Teddy Roosevelt.
"The world seems agreed that the United States is likely to achieve, if indeed she has not already achieved, an economic supremacy. The vortex of the cyclone is New York. No such activity prevails elsewhere; nowhere are undertakings so gigantic, nowhere is administration so perfect; nowhere are such masses of capital centralized in single hands. And as the United States becomes an imperial market, she stretches out along the trade routes which lead from foreign countries to her heart, as every empire has stretched out from the days of Sargon to our own," wrote Adams.
The former global Superpower, Great Britain, according to Adams "is gradually assuming the position of a dependency, which must rely on us as the base from which she draws her food in peace, and without which she could not stand in war," a view borne out in the two world wars of the 20th century. Because London had adopted free trade while Washington still practiced protectionism in Adams' day, American firms were able to profit greatly from their penetration of the British Empire – much as the rising (reborn) empire of China is doing in the American market today.
Indeed, at the end of Adams's interpretative world economic history, he warns that the center of gravity may continue to shift, to Asia. Japan was a rising power in his time, but he thought in the long run China would prove more formidable. "Prudence, therefore, should dictate the adoption of measures to minimize the likelihood of sudden shocks," he advises. "American supremacy has been made possible only by applied science. The labors of successive generations of scientific men have established a control over nature which has enabled the United States to construct a new industrial mechanism, with processes surpassing perfect," he argues, but "America holds its tenure of prosperity only on condition that she can undersell her rivals."
One of my favorite passages also comes near the end of the work: "Life may be destroyed as effectively by peaceful competition as by war. A nation which is undersold may perish by famine as completely as if slaughtered by a conqueror. Therefore, men thrown into acute competition by rivals must have the ingenuity to secure an equality of equipment, else they will suffer; it may be by hunger, it may be by the sword, but in either case the purpose of nature will be attained. Nature abhors the weak."
While it is fashionable to dismiss works of that period as "social Darwinism," labels do not change how the world works, which is in ways just as intense now as ever. Brooks warned against the classical economists dogma of free trade. "Now men are apt to lecture on political economy as if it were a dogma, much as the nominalists and realists lectured in medieval schools. But a priori theories can avail little in matters which are determined by experiment....No one can say a priori what will succeed; the criterion is success." By this standard, U.S. trade policy is a failure, no matter how many academic economists claim it should be working in theory.
The dangerous situation in America today is no longer just one of particular industries being battered by foreign competition. The declining dollar indicates an impending financial meltdown, which would be a clear indicator of the nation's economic defeat in the global arena, and the coming end of its world leadership. America may no longer be a "new empire" but it would be tragic if its leaders allowed foreign rivals to push the country into a retirement home prematurely.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the measure of the USA's output of goods and services, is calculated by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis using the following items:
The BEA News Release for FOURTH QUARTER 2004 provides us with the following current data for these items. (Seasonally adjusted at annual rates)
Gross domestic product (GDP)............................. $11,728.0 billion Personal consumption expenditures.......................... 8,231.1 (70.18% of GDP) Gross private domestic investment.......................... 1,922.4 (16.39% of GDP) Net exports of goods and services........................... -609.3 (-5.19% of GDP) Government consumption expenditures and gross investment... 2,183.8 (18.62% of GDP)
The current BALANCE OF TRADE is in deficit, which is considered unfavorable.
And at historic highs, it diminishes our domestic economy by over 5% - more than twice the normal variation. This is NOT insignificant.
Does anyone know the last time we didn't have a trade deficit?
Lol, Willie Green is at it again. You need to learn basic economics Willie.
ping
Willie... please pick up an economics textbook. The imbalance of trade is accounted for in the other parts of the GDP equation, it's not a dead-weight loss to GDP as you claim here.
Thank you. I get tired of trying to explain economics to liberals. Its like trying to explain sex to virgins.
Another function of decline is the kind of blind complacency so characteristic of late imperial rot. Deficit ? What deficit ? So long as we have Chinese imports everything is fine.
I heard the same crap when Reagan was President.
"Thank you. I get tired of trying to explain economics to liberals."
Don't get discouraged old marine. Demagogues like this guy only survive on ignorance, if you educate their audience their appeal dissapears.
U.S. MERCHANDISE IMPORTS, EXPORTS, AND TRADE DEFICITS: 1940-2003
It looks like it was 1975.
The value of the dollar has declined signficantly since then.
Trade deficits do not mean economic woe, they mean Americans have lots of money to spend, and can afford imported goods.
Where did this concept that Americans must ship out more than they ship in come from?
You don't understand what a trade deficit means, it's not a deadweight loss. If you pick up an introductory economics textbook and learn what you're talking about you'll realize that you are being hysterical.
We have imports going through the roof but still nobody would consider putting any tariffs on these products. Even a measly one or two percent tariff on selected goods would bring in billions to the Federal Treasury. Let's make some money on this trade deficit!!
"Where did this concept that Americans must ship out more than they ship in come from?"
It's a useful tool for demagogues on both the left and right, because alot of people don't understand what the numbers mean.
Thank you all for coming. Today, I would like to formally announce, with conclusive analysis conducted by Willie Green supporting me, that the sky is most definitely falling. I'll take a few quetions...
My thoughts, too. Is the deficit actually such a bad thing?
That would just raise prices for consumers and business costs for US businesses. Please educate yourself before listening to someone like Willie Green.
By all accounts, we should be speaking Japanese right now based on what the doom and gloomers were saying in the 80's.
"My thoughts, too. Is the deficit actually such a bad thing?"
It's not necessarily good or bad. It doesn't mean what this Willie Green guy is implying it means.
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