I think that panfish was very up-front about his purchase of foreign goods, and went so far as to say that he does so even as a union member. The notion that we can or should exist without purchase of foreign goods is noble, but I think misguided, especially since the world is essentially shrinking and transportation costs are dwarfed by manufacturing and labor costs. What we should be focused on is how we can be turning the tide in our favor.
In looking up some stats, I ran into a pretty interesting article about foreign investment offsets to the trade deficits. His conclusions were that since foreign ownership of US land, goods, and businesses was essentailly unchanged (in percentage of the GDP) over the last twenty years, it indicates that growth of the domestic economy has offset things to the point that we’re not ‘selling off’ our country to foreign interests. The article itself can be found here, but he doesn’t source his statistics so it is difficult to support his conclusions without first verifying his facts.
A lot of interesting data also can be found here, where the authors took the time to put things together into nice charts which are pretty readable. One of the more interesting ones:
indicates that our close neighbors aren’t necessarily the culprits, or at least not the major culprits, in our trade deficit woes. It’s no surprise that the dictatorial Chinese government has very tight restrictions on foreign goods entering, the US has been attempting to pry open the major markets of the far East since the Nixon administration. Somewhere out there, there’s a billion kids in need of Minnesota Vikings hats and banners who, if we can turn the tide in our favor, will one day make up the balance of our trade problems.
The question is really one of how best to go about breaking into that market. There is a lot of historical evidence that the Communist government will ultimately collapse under its own weight given the lack of worker incentive, but historical examples of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republic may not hold in the grossly different culture of the far East. I think a lot of people are speculating that by opening trade with China, even at a deficit, some amount of Americanization will take place, leading ultimately to a more open two-way trade policy and perhaps soften the collapse to some extent (although in perspective, the recovery of the former Soviet republics appears to be happening at light-speed).
Will it work? I don’t have enough expertise in Eastern culture or international trade policy to say, but it sure doesn’t seem to be going very fast. It would be interesting to know how much US money is being spent on propping up the Communist government currently. It would be even more interesting to know if the ‘man on the street’ is happy with having his kids chained to a sweatshop floor because he doesn’t want to disgrace his ancestors, or if he’s thinking about the better life he could be living if his government were more cooperative with the US.
I think that the things that will keep the US on top (put the US back on top??) are innovation, incentive, and work ethic. In those areas, I’m not sure there’s much any president can do outside of getting the heck out of our way and letting America get to work (although to be honest, I could use a good vacation)!
Special thanks to James for not nuking this thread a long time ago.
without congress.
Favre for President…….# 4 in ’04 
