If by "net exports going negative" you mean the trade deficit is increasing . . . the last time folks were howling about the trade deficit increasing was during the Reagan Administration, and our G.D.P. rose consistently and at a near constant rate during that period.
Typical of liberals. The ones who made the problem. And still cover for their screw-ups even today. Usually get the history wrong. Deliberately revisionist.
Reagan inherited a massively faltering economy that took basically four years to get turned around. The trade deficits were already in the process of balooning when he took office...he just was on the receiving end of the "kick off" that Jimmy Carter had left him.
...and our G.D.P. rose consistently and at a near constant rate during that period.
Note: Your position represents a contradiction of the prescriptive claims that LowCountryJoe makes for the ppt of his favorite economist...Manckiw.
It just shows that in multivariate situations that one sufficiently positive factor can dominate so as to compensate for other adverse factors. The huge resurgence of domestic investment via defense spending. These triggered massive collateral investment and productivity increases as industry disseminated their new defense technology into civilian applications...which also jumped with the new technology... The defense production contracts greased the skids... The DOD also provided a massive jump on R&D spending, and we are communicating via one outgrowth of that. The mulitiplier effects of manufacturing helped kick the economy into a higher gear...
Eventually the new products which were streaming out of the U.S. production plants were so world-beating that by the end of the Reagan administration, we had essentially eliminated the trade deficit...this despite still relying on OPEC for oil ...and we had a large trade surplus in fact in manufactured goods to help offset that expensive imbalance in energy imports.