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Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

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Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#141

Post by tonyedgecombe »

tossandthrow wrote: post #41
xuki wrote: post #14

Can someone explain to me how the US can reshore manufacturing without dramatically lower their standard of living? Maybe they can subsidize some essential industries but I can’t see a path to do it for everything.

If we take out the money of the equation, it really is about what activities constitute good standard of living. Is it better standard of living to be in a small apartment in the city working an office job or is it better standard of living being in a more rural area working manual jobs. (I honestly don't know, personally, I prefer to do thinking work)

Traditional manual work has disappeared and isn't coming back. I was watching our water company lay new pipe outside my house recently and there were no people wielding picks and shovels. There was a ton of technology involved though.

For rural employment to increase you would need to throw away all the technological progress from the last century. The country and economy would be unrecognisable from what it is now.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#142

Post by mk89 »

exe34 wrote: post #128
mk89 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, did you see the trade for goods and services deficit with EU? It's ludicrous. But hey, the president decided to focus only on goods. Why not on everything ? Because it's unjustified. He needs money. A lot. And throwing out accusations at other countries is the only way he can get out of it fine. If he had just set a 10-15% tax on all imports "just because" people would have never approved. Now, on the other…

I was thinking, the UK and EU should set extra taxes on US tech companies to offset the tariffs. don't even need to fix the amount - just tie it to whatever the tariffs are.

Sure, let's all lose our jobs, who needs them anyways...!

But then finally we proved Trump and all those evil Americans a point! *evil laughter...

We in EU could do that, if we dared investing in tech.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#143

Post by tonyedgecombe »

zabzonk wrote: post #9

Strange. I, as a UK citizen, don't seem to buy almost any physical USA goods at all.

I was thinking about this, outside of services the only thing I do buy is Park Tool bike tools (which are excellent).

I suppose I could include Apple products on the basis that the majority of the profits go to the US rather than the country of manufacture. Apple sells £1.5b of goods and services in the UK although that won't appear in the UK-US trade figures.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#144

Post by tonyedgecombe »

eyko wrote: post #91
zabzonk wrote: post #9

Strange. I, as a UK citizen, don't seem to buy almost any physical USA goods at all.

As a UK non-citizen resident, my observation is that our economy is pretty much involved with USA (and the global economy more generally). I just looked up the latest trade and investments factsheet[1] and there are some interesting deets. If you're wondering about direct investment in the US as well as imports: - Total UK imports from United States amounted to £111.5 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 202…

>Total UK imports from United States amounted to £111.5 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024 (a decrease of 5.1% or £5.9 billion in current prices, compared to the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023).

Also "Total UK exports to United States amounted to £182.6 billion in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2024 (a decrease of 0.5% or £889 million in current prices, compared to the four quarters to the end of Q3 2023);"

Which is why the current government is being particularly cautious at the moment.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#145

Post by [deleted] »

whall6 wrote: post #123
kdjs7 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats just half the story. What the US has traditionally done is make these countries then take Dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank to buy American defense and high tech products. When they naturally then default (right now there are more than 50 countries that cant pay back these dollar loans cause where the fuck are they going to get dollars from) their only option is to sell off their natural resources to Wal…

I get the sentiment, but using ship building is an unfortunate example with respect to substantiating your point. The US shipbuilders are alive and well (not to the extent they were in WWII era). Military ships, Jones Act compliant commercial vessels, ferries, tugboats, etc. All US made. Separately, your first paragraph also seems problematic. Let’s take Vietnam and Cambodia as examples: neither has a US military bas…

[deleted]

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#146

Post by LeonB »

whall6 wrote: post #123
kdjs7 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats just half the story. What the US has traditionally done is make these countries then take Dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank to buy American defense and high tech products. When they naturally then default (right now there are more than 50 countries that cant pay back these dollar loans cause where the fuck are they going to get dollars from) their only option is to sell off their natural resources to Wal…

I get the sentiment, but using ship building is an unfortunate example with respect to substantiating your point. The US shipbuilders are alive and well (not to the extent they were in WWII era). Military ships, Jones Act compliant commercial vessels, ferries, tugboats, etc. All US made. Separately, your first paragraph also seems problematic. Let’s take Vietnam and Cambodia as examples: neither has a US military bas…

I generally agree.

This bit I see differently, though only with ~ 30% confidence.

> vast majority of the companies in the S&P 500 have nothing to do with defense, shipping or natural resources.

If you were evaluating the impact that a road has, and you looked at all the vehicles that passed over it every day, most of the vehicles you see would be in other industries — retail, industrial, commercial, domestic — very few of them are professional bitumen pourers who make roads. So clearly bitumen pouring only affects a low percentage of the city.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#147

Post by sandworm101 »

jocaal wrote: post #118
sandworm101 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> the US is not the ultimate global hegemon anymore The hegemon concept is also out of date. World trade is not dominated by countries but by multinationals. For instance, there are no real "US" car companies. There are a handful of huge conglomerates who can choose to operate wherever best suits their needs. These respond to edicts from individual countries but operate at a level above nation states. This is why in…

That is the case for western economies. China controls nearly all levels of its supply chain. In the past, they didn't have the skills for design, but over time has gained that skill set (china now creates nearly a third of the worlds new engineers per year) and is now capable of designing and manufacturing world class products all in-house. I guess the only exception is semi-conductors, but we all know they are desp…

And Chinese companies may soon have to evolve too should they want to remain competitive. Being at the behest of a single country is a weakness. A strong company is one that can shift between countries and therefore does not need to bend to their will. The largest Chinese companies will, one day soon, have to step away from Chinese government control.

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#148

Post by collaborative »

torginus wrote: post #18

This would be true for any other country, but the dollar is the world's reserve currency. The US can simply go 'money printer go BRR' and create money out of thin air, without devaluing the dollar too much, which it can exchange for physical goods. The US creates a 'trade deficit' by swapping things that have imaginary value for things that do not. Under these circumstances they'd be foolish on not running a trade de…

I don't understand how nobody in the media is talking about this. The world accepts the US as the producer of currency, trades energy in dollars, etc. The US gets to print money for free, how is that bad for the US?

So far I can only see 2 reasons why Trump wants this:

1. He believes the US can force others to pay even more, via tariffs, and they will just accept it. No retaliatory tariffs. Kind of like how he says Greenland will be handed to the US no problem. Dishonest? Delusional? Bullyish?

2. The theory of him being a Russian asset is true, and this is the way for Russia to undermine the US while looking like Trump is rooting for the US. The real plan is for the world to drop the dollar. I don't like conspiracy theories but it just makes no sense otherwise

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#149

Post by iNic »

rib3ye wrote: post #96
iNic wrote: post #26

Interesting, and worrying at the time, but he clearly turned out to be wrong. The trend never stopped [1] and is not obviously responsible for any negative economic trend. The trend has continued [2]. The thing to worry about is probably not that it is happening, but who is holding these investments. [1]: https://www.bea.gov/data/intl-trade-investment/international... [2]: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1HrHY

It's moments like right now that the white collar class seems forget the wealth inequality in the US that's been widening over the last 50 years.

Yes, but also the story is not that simple. The share has actually been growing since 2010: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WFRBSB50215

Re: Growing trade deficit is selling the nation out from under us (2003) [pdf]

#150

Post by tossandthrow »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #141
tossandthrow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we take out the money of the equation, it really is about what activities constitute good standard of living. Is it better standard of living to be in a small apartment in the city working an office job or is it better standard of living being in a more rural area working manual jobs. (I honestly don't know, personally, I prefer to do thinking work)

Traditional manual work has disappeared and isn't coming back. I was watching our water company lay new pipe outside my house recently and there were no people wielding picks and shovels. There was a ton of technology involved though. For rural employment to increase you would need to throw away all the technological progress from the last century. The country and economy would be unrecognisable from what it is now.

Same can be said about intellectual work.

The question is how post-industrialism wealth redistribution looks like, when work does not seem to be a good key.

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