Trade Deficit

China is yet another country that Americans (including me) love to blame for our economic problems. Yes, I know that we have a trade imbalance with China and that our middle class jobs are disappearing. Yesterday, we blamed Taiwan and South Korea. Before that, it was Canada and Mexico. Tomorrow it will be India and Thailand. Eventually it will be Ethiopia and North Korea (get one of those North Korean SUVs, they are going to be awesome). It’s not them, it’s US. We are the problem and we are the solution.

The solution to trade imbalance and outsourcing is simply, we have to live within our means. That means only importing goods that we can pay for with exports. That means fewer ultra cool techno toys from Asia. That means driving (gulp) American cars.

To this end, we must stop targeting problem traders and start targeting problems with our ability to trade:

1) We cannot afford our bloated healthcare system. Everyone should be covered. Everyone should pay. We should cut out all the middlemen. We should cut out all the expensive advertising for medication. We should create a national budget for healthcare that will cap spending at a reasonable level. People will lose their jobs. That’s what happens when you downsize a bloated and inefficient industry. However, I am confident that we can focus our healthcare spending towards people who provide care and less towards people who shuffle paperwork.

2) We need to repair and upgrade our infrastructure. Our roads and bridges are working beyond their rated capacity and lifespan. Our airports and seaports are overloaded and are bottlenecks to our commerce. The cities that are our centers of trade and innovation need mass transit upgrades to escape their paralyzing gridlock.

3) The American economy has become a game of winner-take-all that doesn’t benefit the majority of Americans. Rich Americans don’t spend or invest money, they just sit on it. If we took some of the money from the rich and gave it to the poor, the poor would spend the money in America (food and rent) and stimulate our economy.

4) America exports a lot of debt. Our exporters compete with our debt for foreign debt. We need to raise our taxes and balance our budget. Then we can start to export goods and services instead of debt.

5) America’s greatest resource is our people. We need to invest in training our people for the jobs we cannot fill. This includes college, technical schools and trade schools

6) If, after all of this, there are still jobs that cannot be filled, we need foreign guest workers to keep our industry working. We would have fewer illegal aliens living in America if workers could come and go as needed rather than being stuck here because they cannot freely come and go. Guest workers could work in America and return to their families when they completed their employment instead of moving their families to America.

Only then, after we've cleaned up our mess, should we talk about tariffs