Every time I read a post of your's I find another thing to laugh at.
Fundamental weakness of the US export sector? You mean the export sector that is the largest export sector in the world? The sector that exported $1.15 trillion of goods and services in 2004? Versus China's $593 billion in exports? So China's exports make them a rampaging powerhouse while our exports (nearly double China's) mean we're fundamentally weak? [sound of idiots on Paul's end]
1.15 trillion? What made up the majority of these exports? I am not doubting it, I am just curious.
You continue to manifest ignorance about what China actually is, as well as your usual knee-jerk trade misrepresentations. How much of the U.S. export is one-way, one time tansfers of technology and know-how? And how much is "round-robin" exports of parts to be assembled and merged with foreign components abroad to be reimported? And of our "exports" how much do they now also depend on imported parts?
We can't know that our export sector is really doing well at all so long as these substitutionary practices are comparatively unmeasured, although anecdotal evidence indicates they are now huge factors, and the slide of the dollar, (only now temporarily arrested by the EU snafu), is highly suggestive.
The overall measures published show that U.S. imports are exceeding our exports by $620 billion. The approximately two-to-one gap is often waved away as inconsequential by apologists for the inordinate importation.
But the disparate impact of the new and increased Chinese imports to our market are particularly damaging because of their being increasingly upgraded, and the retargetting from the low-end upwards to our own remaining exportable industrial products cxategories, and also because of their ability as a communist country to play our own free markets and citizens into supportive tools for abetting their own select agenda.