Posted on 02/25/2003 7:49:56 AM PST by FITZ
American manufacturers took a huge battering in 2002 as the nation's trade deficit hit a record $435.2 billion.
A deficit occurs when America imports more than it exports.
It's disappointing that the U.S. continues to have wide deficits with its two trading partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico and Canada. While NAFTA has proved of tremendous benefit to those two countries, the United States, and particularly the southern border area, still have not seen the rich economic harvest promised by NAFTA proponents.
But the bulk of the deficit is with China and Japan. China accounted for $103.1 billion of the 2002 deficit, and Japan caused $70.1 billion in deficit.
President Bush says that his plans for new free-trade agreements will narrow the deficit by lowering barriers to U.S. exports. He may be right, but NAFTA certainly shouldn't be used as a model.
One troubling facet of the 2002 deficit is that farm trade posted a loss.
Generally, farm exports can be counted on for big surpluses, and this is only the second time farm trade has suffered a deficit.
It's true that many forces were at work on the trade balance this year, including uncertainty about war, a weak world economy, emphasis on a strong dollar, stock-market malaise and unemployment.
But massive and increasing trade deficits were with us well before these newer concerns. Such a massive deficit won't be fixed in a year or two. But the Bush administration's economic gurus need to be finding ways to even things out.
Maybe to Canada but Mexico is in deep economic trouble, and they seem to forget the campesinos have been protesting NAFTA.
No one needs to benefit from NAFTA, ever. Like anything else government does, it's the thought that counts.
That's the same thing they say about Communism, another failed government controled plan...
NAFTA was never about selling the impoverished Mexicans products they couldn't afford. NAFTA was about American companies sending (exporting) raw materials duty-free to Mexico to be manufactured with cheap labor then have the finished product "imported" duty-free back here for consumption.
NAFTA labor wasn't cheap enough for the greedy bastards, so now they've closed down and moved on from Mexico to China...Where I think they'll meet their match.
As usual, your posts make no sense. When did cheap labor become bad? Doesn't labor have a market value just as other goods and services? You slam government and then you slam the private sector. Does anything please you?
When greedy businesses profited from the American way and when that wasn't good enough they abandoned the people of the country that got them where they are...People who in some cases even subsidized them through reduced property taxes, energy rates, local taxes etc. to attract their business.
Doesn't labor have a market value just as other goods and services?
Sure, I wonder if you feel the same about union's and their collective bargaining. When you can find American workers who can (even if they wanted to) live on what a Chinese or even a Mexican worker earns let me know.
Someday your words/attitude/greed will come back to haunt you.
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* NAFTA went into effect January 1, 1994
Despite the rapid emergence of China as a lopsided trading "partner",
the Trade Deficit with Mexico continues to grow since the signing of NAFTA.
The drug cartels. As the volume of goods crossing our borders increase and the regulation of their flow decreases due to the volume, it makes it easier for the drug smugglers.
And that's the best you can do!
We have no trade imbalance in the true sense of the word. When we paid dollars we got an equal amount in goods and services making that an even trade, not an imbalance.........
Blah, blah, blah...empty words with no meaning salted with greed...Were you saying something about a post not making any sense?
Sing your little song to the White House who's starting to squirm a little over your idiotic self-serving theory of no imbalance.
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