The Trade Deficit Nightmare
by ilene - August 15th, 2010 5:40 pm
The Trade Deficit Nightmare
Courtesy of Michael Snyder of Economic Collapse
When they hear the word deficit, most Americans immediately think of the U.S. government budget deficit which is rapidly spiralling out of control. But that is not the only deficit which is ripping the U.S. economy to shreds. In fact, many economists commonly speak of the "twin deficits" that are destroying the U.S. financial system. So what is the "other deficit" that they are referring to? It is the trade deficit. Every single month, we buy much more stuff from the rest of the world than they buy from us. That means that every single month there is a massive outflow of wealth from the United States. Every single day, America becomes just a little bit poorer as Americans continue to run out and fill up their shopping carts with cheap plastic crap from China and dozens of other emerging economies.
Not that trade is a bad thing. Trade can actually be a very good thing. But the gigantic trade imbalances that the United States has been running for years are absolutely bleeding us dry. Unfortunately, our politicians have just stood idly by as each month we continue to transfer massive amounts of wealth out of the United States.
The U.S. Commerce Department recently announced that the U.S. trade deficit increased by 18.8 percent in June to $49.9 billion. Most analysts had expected the figure to be somewhere around 41 to 43 billion dollars.
In the month of June, imports rose to approximately $200 billion while exports fell to about $150 billion.
So can we afford to have a net outflow of 50 billion dollars each and every month?
Of course not.
We had so much wealth as a nation that we could afford to do this for a while,…
 Twitter
|
LinkedIn
|
 del.icio.us
|
|
German
Spanish
French
Italian
Portuguese
Japanese
Korean
Russian
Chinese
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the site