A huge trade imbalance says that ultimately you are losing manufacturing jobs. Otherwise, you’d be making some of it yourself to compete with the imports.
To deal with that, wages must go down. Lower wages mean less purchasing.
That means the ultimate direction of this economy is down.
And that’s especially so with a government sucking away capital and wasting it on paper-pusher jobs that produce nothing.
At least CCC & WPA built things.
The huge trade inbalance has been around for years (as long as I remember) so I don’t buy that as a key factor.
But I agree that government sucking capital and then forcing businesses to play in an uneven field by regulating it has finally tipped the balance. But since most major companies are global they have other sources of income which can make them look attractive to their share holders.
The economy is big and multifaceted, and given people make fortunes off the economy going up and down - I think we are bouncing along the bottom.
We’ll be fine after we get rid of Obama and put the adults back in charge.