Trade deficit

“ Trade is only the most recent subject of lamentation by our critics. For them, our trade deficit is an excuse for getting the Government more involved in private business decisions. They say that Americans can't compete with foreign workers, so we should slow imports by erecting protectionist trade barriers. ”

“ Last year our trade deficit with China alone was almost $227 billion. In other words, we are purchasing a whole lot more products than we are selling.
Sometimes I get a kick out of hearing the defenders of our trade policy talk about all of the products we are exporting. Well, yeah, we are exporting a lot, but we are importing a heck of a lot more. So I think what you have is a major economic issue. That economic issue is that we are losing millions of good-paying jobs because of our disastrous trade policy. ”

“ Well, the way up and out of the trade deficit is not protectionism, not bringing down the competition, but instead the answer lies in improving our products and increasing our exports. The Government should work to create the conditions in which fair trade will flourish. We should be trying to foster the growth of two-way trade, not trying to put up roadblocks, to open foreign markets, not close our own. As I told them at the Harley-Davidson plant, it's time to gun the engines, not put on the brakes. ”

“ We've lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, and we've lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Our trade deficit in goods with the world last year was nearly $800 billion dollars. ”

“ First, the trade situation is improving far more quickly than people realize. Economists may disagree on the impact of the trade imbalance, but there is no disagreement that there has been a remarkable turnaround in the real trade deficit. Since the third quarter of 1986, the merchandise trade deficit in real terms has declined 18 percent. And over the past 15 months, the volume of exports has grown over 4 times as fast as the volume of imports. Clearly, we are in an export boom. American industries, particularly manufacturers, are setting records. ”

“ To balance its domestic economy, the US has to attract a large amount of foreign savings by trade deficit. This is the fundamental cause of the US trade deficit over the years. The US began to run trade deficits in its foreign trade in 1971, and by 2017 it was running trade deficits with 102 countries. The US trade deficit is an endogenous, structural and sustained economic phenomenon. The current trade deficit of the US with the rest of the world has shifted among its trading partners and resides with China for the time being. ”

“ U.S. exports have become less attractive to foreign buyers for the same reason. Recently, however, increased growth in the economies of our trading partners and movement of the dollar toward a more sustainable equilibrium give us reason to expect that our trade deficit should ease in the near future. ”

“ The United States, however, has a large and persistent trade deficit in manufacturing, overall as well as with certain trading partners. Through an increased commitment to opening markets, reducing barriers to our goods, and firmly addressing unfair trade practices, we can do far better for American workers and manufacturers. ”

“ First, substantial increases in petroleum products and capital equipment have reversed the favorable trade balance and severely strained the foreign exchange earnings of the country. At the end of the year, we will have a deficit in our trade. ”

“ For the US the cost for printing a hundred-dollar bill is no more than a few cents, but other countries will have to provide real goods and services in exchange for that note. On the other hand, as a major global currency, the US dollar supports global trade settlements, and the US supplies US dollars to the world by way of a deficit. Therefore, beneath the US trade deficit lie profound US interests and the very root of the international currency system. ”

“ In terms of trade mix, China’s trade surplus with the US mainly comes from labor-intensive products and manufactured goods, and its trade deficit with the US lies in capital- and technology-intensive products such as aircraft, integrated circuits, and automobiles, as well as agricultural products. In 2017, China ran a US$16.4 billion trade deficit with the US in agricultural products, accounting for 33% of China’s total trade deficit in the agricultural sector; a US$12.75 billion trade deficit with the US in aircraft, accounting for 60% of China’s total trade deficit in this sector ”

“ Our economic plan also bolsters our strength and our credibility around the world. Once we reduced the deficit and put the steel back into our competitive edge, the world echoed with the sound of falling trade barriers. In one year, with NAFTA, with GATT, with our efforts in Asia and the national export strategy, we did more to open world markets to American products than at any time in the last two generations. That means more jobs and rising living standards for the American people, low deficits, low inflation, low interest rates, low trade barriers and high investments. ”

“ The United States lost over 3 million manufacturing jobs, nearly a quarter of all steel jobs, and 60,000 factories after China joined the WTO. And we have racked up $13 trillion in trade deficits over the last two decades. ”

“ The new "command" system proved to be totally unworkable and resulted in galloping devaluation. In addition to the burdens imposed on businesses by high inflation and an artificial currency regime, businesses have also been subject to pressure on the part of central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, and retroactive application of new business regulations prohibiting practices that had been legal. A further economic problem is the sizable trade deficit. ”

“ At the center of our vision for national renewal is an ambitious campaign to reform international trade. For decades, the international trading system has been easily exploited by nations acting in very bad faith. As jobs were outsourced, a small handful grew wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
In America, the result was 4.2 million lost manufacturing jobs and $15 trillion in trade deficits over the last quarter century. The United States is now taking that decisive action to end this grave economic injustice. Our goal is simple: We want balanced trade that is both fair and reciprocal. ”

“ If money is scarce in any country, prices will be low, exports large relatively to imports, and the resulting favorable balances will bring gold into the country. It is obvious, therefore, that international trade speedily corrects any local excess or deficit. A general excess or deficit in the money supply carries with it a certain correction also, but the operation is slower. If prices rise, showing a fall in the value of money, mining enterprises become less profitable, and the additions to the volume of money will tend to grow less. ”

“ But let it be supposed that the whole defalcation of our exports, from £60,000,000 in 1845, to £53,000,000 in 1848, was owing to the European revolutions, and none at all to the paralysis of domestic industry by the effects of free trade and a fettered currency—seven millions deficit, out of £200,000,000 annual produce of manufactures, is only a twenty-ninth part. ”

“ As a candidate for President, I promised that my Administration would fight every day for American Workers.
Years of unfair trade have hammered American families and plundered American wealth. It’s been absolutely terrible for our country. We turned a blind eye while other nations targeted our industries and ransacked our factories. They took advantage of our country. They took advantage of our people. Over the last two decades, the United States racked up $12.5 trillion dollar trade deficits in goods, and watched nearly one-third of our manufacturing jobs disappear or go to other countries. ”

“ To address these challenges, it is essential that policy makers and the persons representing the United States in trade negotiations have access to current and comprehensive information regarding unfair trade practices and the causes of United States trade deficits. ”

“ It is easy to see that the increase of this foreign debt must augment the annual demand on the exports to pay the interest, and to the same extent diminish the imports, and in proportion to the enlargement of the foreign debt and the consequent increase of interest must be the decrease of the import trade. ”

“ Now, Sir, the whole fallacy of this argument consists in supposing, that, whenever the value of imports exceeds that of exports, a debt is necessarily created to the extent of the difference, whereas, ordinarily, the import is no more than the result of the export, augmented in value by the labor of transportation. The excess of imports over exports, in truth, usually shows the gains, not the losses, of trade; or, in a country that not only buys and sells goods, but employs ships in carrying goods also, it shows the profits of commerce, and the earnings of navigation. ”

“ Either we should gradually be turning from a creditor country into a debtor country, and the official publications certainly do not warrant such an assumption at the present moment, or the higher value of money would act detrimentally on all our industries and trade generally, our purchasing power would decrease, which would directly lead to a reduction of imports, the home demand would slacken, and wages and prices generally would fall, and the surplus production of our factories, failing a market at home, would have to be exported. ”

“ And great abundance is produced by the workers, but their wages will only buy back a small part of their product. What is the result? They have a vast surplus on hand; they have got to export it; they have got to find a foreign market for it. As a result of this, these nations are pitted against each other. They begin to arm themselves to open, to maintain the market and quickly dispose of their surplus. There is but the one market. All these nations are competitors for it, and sooner or later every war of trade becomes a war of blood. ”

“ What was true at the onset of the crisis is still true today: our economy, hence our recovery efforts, are challenged by circumstances beyond our control, by conditions beyond our shores. We are confronted by a slowdown in world trade, by a growth recession in our major trading partner, the U.S., by a fall in export prices and by a growing wave to protectionism in the developed economies of U.S., Japan and Europe. ”

“ From the other side, also, the over-balance or under-balance (Ueber-oder Unterbilanz) of a country may continue, a very long time, when its internal trade with its money-need is, in the first case, an increasing, and in the last, a decreasing one. So far, the preponderance of the importation of money may be called a favorable sign and the preponderance of the exportation of money an unfavorable one. And the person who thinks that a permanent preponderance of exports or imports is not at all possible in the way of commerce, overlooks the possibility of a very extensive national indebtedness. ”

“ There is not a single year, for the last twenty years, in which our imports have not exceeded our exports by at least 50 millions, the amount of the excess in the aggregate being something like 1,500 millions. And yet, at the end of this period, which comprises more than half the Free Trade epoch, and during which the country is said to have been getting rapidly impoverished, he makes out that we have in our strong box 2,000 millions of the world's obligations! ”

“ Investors, demanding interest payments from foreign debtors, will no longer be able to maintain the attitude that imports menace the prosperity of the country and should be cut down by the restrictions of the tariff. Exporters will find that the current is set against them, and that they can broaden their market only as they stimulate still greater growth in the import trade. ”

“ In other words, the shrinkage of foreign trade by one and one-half billions amounts to only 2 or 3 per cent of our total productivity. Yet as a result of all the adverse forces our production has been reduced by, roughly, ten or twelve billions. This sharp contrast between a national shrinkage of, say, twelve billions, and a loss of one and one-half billions from export trade is an indication of the disarrangement of our own internal production and consumption entirely apart from that resulting from decreased sales abroad. ”

“ While in the case of the latter the fiscal policy of the country for now more than a quarter of a century has been based upon the idea that foreign trade is injurious, and therefore importations, without which there can be no exportations, should be prevented. ”

“ He said, "The country is going to ruin; the balance of trade is against us. How can we continue to go on in this way many more years? Our exports last year were so many millions, and our imports so many millions more, and we are poorer by the difference between the imports and exports." ”

“ The effect of a tax on imports is likened to that of a tax on exports. But in respect to effects on price levels a tax on imports and a tax on exports are diametrically opposed. If we place our tax on exports, we first interfere with exports. The imports are not checked until money has flowed out and has reduced the general price level enough to destroy the "unfavorable" balance of trade first created. We conclude that the general purchasing power of money is reduced by a tariff and that it would be increased by a tax on exports. ”