It’s taken to mean that we export more than we import. But from the point of view of our well-being, that’s an unfavorable balance.
No it isn't.
That means we’re sending out more goods and getting fewer in.
That's good. We're producing more and getting money for goods we make.
Each of you in your private household would know better than that. You don’t regard it as a favorable balance when you have to send out more goods to get less coming in. It’s favorable when you can get more by sending out less."
Apples and oranges, or more precisely, Alice in Wonderland. A household is not a cottage industry. The person brings in money (earned by making things here) and spends it on stuff, either made here or elsewhere.
On the other hand, the goods and services we import, they provide us with TV sets we can watch, automobiles we can drive, with all sorts of nice things for us to use.
And those items can be made here as well, employing the citizenry. You can't buy much it you don't have a job, or have one at a subsistence wage.
The difference is that you are using money as an end in itself. Friedman sees it only as the means to acquire goods. I recall hearing him talk about exporting green pieces of paper in exchange for these goods.
There is something Friedman leaves out here, it's not a complete picture. But the more important lesson is that people think about trade incorrectly, and he's not wrong about that.
You have a trade imbalance with your supermarket, or your barber, or your employer. One of you gets more money from your exchange than the other. But that's not a bad thing, that's good. Each of you chose to make that exchange because it was beneficial, and it does you no damage.
If we get cheaper goods from China then that means that all the consumers that buy those goods are richer by whatever amount they saved. Nobody counts that. But that sum is always greater than income that would be earned by people making those things. Cheaper imports make us better off as a whole.