Graph of the day... made (and bought) in the USA

[cbelt3]

billb wrote:
3% doesn't sound like much until you also indicate how many jobs that represents.

It's also important to recognize that automation plays a big part. US manufacturers automated like crazy in the last hundred years. Factoring in jobs 'lost' to automation is also important. And the same thing happens elsewhere... look at FoxConns 'million robot' plans.

[OWC Jamie]

Yup, I used lots of robots, cutting emplyoment of unskilled laborers in half. Then in half again.
Course those robots also require skilled support labor.

Capitalization is still too often less in China.

you're still stacking losses on top of losses

without taxing the dumping

[CaBob]

Check out the trade deficit as a fraction of GDP. Looking at recent figures (through 2008) shows an approximately steady trade deficit of about 5 percent of GDP, year after year. It's a little hard to believe that this is sustainable in the long run, and it presumably correlates with the fact that the U.S. continues to be in recession as European and Asian countries do much better.

Or to put it more simply, we are building up debt to foreign countries. Some of that debt gets recycled into purchases of U.S. treasury notes and other investments in American holdings, but that is just another way of saying that we are selling off our country.

Or to repeat an old line, I can look out my window (at the port of Los Angeles) and watch the trade deficit accumulate.

This is, of course, linked to our petroleum profligacy, our refusal to face reality and increase taxes on the wealthy, and a few other things like spending half or two-thirds of a trillion each year on military costs. Notice that we could make these expenditures if we wanted without destroying our economy, but it would involve a more adult approach to paying through taxes rather than through long term borrowing.