the United Stares biggest import ton for ton was (maybe still), oxygen, it looks to be impossible to search for, as of course the only returns are for profit making companys, not anything so trivial as the atmosphere, which realy just makes the point that the whole concept of money and economy exists in a special bubble, where control of the naritive is what realy counts
Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
51–60 of 814 posts
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#52Getting real physical products in exchange for imaginary numbers and services is a good deal? We sell a lot of software?
I really don't think discussion of complex topics should be reductively reduced to snarky xkcd comics that aren't even right.
Current account deficit already accounts for both goods & services. From a more formal perspective, deficts aren't neccessairly bad if they're being routed into productive investments at home, as with many developing countries needing to import machinery, but if it's being used to fund consumption, and it's persistent, then it's considered by many (including the IMF) to be unsustainable on the long term, and highly unstable on the short term.
The current account deficit can be also expressed as the gap between investment and savings, of which must be financed by a combination of private and public debt to external investment, of which around 50% comes from the ever-growing US Gov debt. You're basically going into debt to finance your consumption, and it's a big reason why the US credit ratings have been going down this decade. You won't fix the debt without addressing the deficit, and can you really count for growth to exceed the interest forever? When the black swan comes, then it's gonna hurt alot more than it needs to be.
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we would have automated assembly faster—the investment in which would’ve been counted in domestic investment offsetting the trade deficit, right? I’m trying to verify my mental model of what’s going on.
the assumption being that the automated assembly is going to be price competitive with the manual assembly. If this is the case, why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain? After all, there's no reason not to make it cheaper. The only conclusion you can draw is that the automated assembly will still be more expensive compared to the current manual one.
Or it would mean the time and cost for tooling would be prohibitive to annual releases, as they would need to sell each refresh for longer.
Like car manufacturing where the models are more consistent each year with longer cycles to refresh.
I honestly don’t see that as a big issue. It may even be better.
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we would have automated assembly faster—the investment in which would’ve been counted in domestic investment offsetting the trade deficit, right? I’m trying to verify my mental model of what’s going on.
the assumption being that the automated assembly is going to be price competitive with the manual assembly. If this is the case, why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain? After all, there's no reason not to make it cheaper. The only conclusion you can draw is that the automated assembly will still be more expensive compared to the current manual one.
Are you arguing that if something hasn't been invented/adopted yet, then it will never be? Because IIRC the Chinese do invest into attempts to automate the phone assembly. It may not yet be price-competitive today but why not tomorrow?
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#55Too much consumption versus production. One component is the ever ballooning government debt. Essentially in 'trade deficit' the thing that is not taken into account is one very big export article of the US. Pieces of paper with 'IOU' written on them. The whole Trump trade war is the completely preposterous thing of spending more in the shop than you can afford and then blaming the shop for taking advantage of you. T…
Other POV : one of the side effect of the Ukraine invasion, it's now possible for countries to buy oil in other currencies than USD. (1) Because of this, USD 's power is fading and its value slowly plummeting. One way to limit damages that could come with a weak $ is for the USA to bring back manufacturing capacities. That could be why Biden already put some protectionist measure in place in 2024. (2) Yes Trump is wh…
> Other POV : one of the side effect of the Ukraine invasion, it's now possible for countries to buy oil in other currencies than USD. (1)
I do not know why you're downvoted but I have listened to some very intelligent people who seem to focus on long term thinking & they feel the SWIFT action against Russia will end up hurting the US more than it hurt Russia. Some may argue it was inevitable for countries to start pulling away from the dollar but this increased the speed of it. The current taunting & unfriendly relations is exponentially ruining the USD on top of it.
While the odds were very low for the US to continue it's dominance in the world into the next century, it sure seems our lack of leadership in both parties is accelerating our downfall.
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would they become worthless? The entire world is forever beholden to Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play, whether people like it or not. People have made free or cheaper or local or better alternatives and they have never succeeded at dethroning these
> Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play One of these things is not like the others.
Laughably so...
1. The operating system running a lot of corporate software
2. Productivity suite that is still the standard for creating documents
3. Cloud infrastructure that scales to any demand
4. Porn and racism
5/6. The worlds only mobile operating systems and dominant app stores
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or we would have automated assembly faster—the investment in which would’ve been counted in domestic investment offsetting the trade deficit, right? I’m trying to verify my mental model of what’s going on.
the assumption being that the automated assembly is going to be price competitive with the manual assembly. If this is the case, why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain? After all, there's no reason not to make it cheaper. The only conclusion you can draw is that the automated assembly will still be more expensive compared to the current manual one.
It does happen in the chinese supply chain; it's already heavily automated. It's a bit late to try to undercut them using automation.
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’d also be curious why the EU doesn’t consistently run trade deficits. Some EU countries probably do, but because they are smaller economies it seems less critical. Combining the EU economies can hide a Spanish deficit within the German surplus fairly easily. e.g. the German surplus are 10 times higher than the Spanish deficit (if I recall correctly). The EU viewed as a whole, I don't know, maybe due to a very div…
See answer above - the EU is less "debt-fueled". But I also think that EU producers are more competitive. The US has a strong tendency towards local monopolies which are bad for export competitiveness.
"The US has a strong tendency towards local monopolies"
also the problem is US is one of the largest market in the world, if you can conquer US market. you can pretty much do that elsewhere
essentially monopolize an entire world
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems great until those imaginary numbers become worthless overnight. Then you might have a bit of an "oh shit" moment as you realize that the industrial ecosystem required to substitute those imports would take a decade and a half to build even if your money were worth something, which it now isnt. Lots of countries collapse due to overreliance on foreign imports. Argentina never recovered from its peak in the 19…
Why would they become worthless? The entire world is forever beholden to Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play, whether people like it or not. People have made free or cheaper or local or better alternatives and they have never succeeded at dethroning these
> forever beholden to Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play,
There is one country that is very much not as beholden as everyone else. Even if everyone calls it a "PPT", it's quite often going to come from WPS.
Though the state of Linux support for things like WeChat/Com is... Not great. But there been a uptick in inquiries about Linux support for a system in the last 2 months so something's lit a fire under some posteriors recently.
Re: Why does the U.S. always run a trade deficit?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems great until those imaginary numbers become worthless overnight. Then you might have a bit of an "oh shit" moment as you realize that the industrial ecosystem required to substitute those imports would take a decade and a half to build even if your money were worth something, which it now isnt. Lots of countries collapse due to overreliance on foreign imports. Argentina never recovered from its peak in the 19…
Why would they become worthless? The entire world is forever beholden to Microsoft Windows, Office, AWS, X, iOS, Google Play, whether people like it or not. People have made free or cheaper or local or better alternatives and they have never succeeded at dethroning these
Microsoft, AWS, Google (et al) pays bribes in dollars.