What's the deal with America's trade deficits, /pol/? Are our trade deficits with China and Mexico bad, or do they have some benefits?
My Hillary-supporting lefty poli-sci professor tried to argue today that Trump is wrong that our trade deficits are bad.
He brought up the "Triffin dilemma," which holds that the provider of the global reserve currency (USA) would need to run perpetual trade deficits to keep the world financial system from freezing, with those trade deficits potentially fueling domestic booms and busts.
>Its better that we give other people wins instead of us winning so they can do good
no
you can't have every country in the world running a trade surplus, someone has to be running a deficit.
suggesting otherwise is neo-mercantalism.
>>70076094
So does our country have to bear this burden? What would the global economic consequences be if we reversed our deficits with China and/or Mexico?
Trade deficits are a symptom. They aren't necessarily bad by themselves, but they can be indications of major underlying problems. It's like arguing that someone's occasional headaches really aren't that bad so it doesn't make sense to go to the hospital for it... when the headaches are being caused by a growing brain tumor.
>>70075798
The original idea was that America was doing so well that we could afford to reach down into the dregs of the world and basically give away international welfare.
Now that they're basically even with us our retarded politicians are slowly realizing that the rest of the world isn't so retardedly altruistic.
We're getting fucked because we keep bending over for them with a smile.
trade deficits are as much of a meme as the gender pay gap. When you get more than you make that's GOOD.
>>70076360
Can you elaborate? What, specifically, are America's major trade deficits a symptom of?
>>70075798
It's true, we use the USD to cuck every other country's shit up. That's the game we've been playing for a long time.
We run up out debt at infinitum but we got the biggest dick and the biggest military. Basically we give other countries fake money for real labor and real goods and other countries are dumb enough to keep using this fake money.
There WILL be another global economic collapse and every country will be hit worse than the US.
>>70075798
trade defecit means money is moving abroad. or it means we are exporting jobs and redistributing wealth from american workers to wallstreet.
>>70075798
When other countries sell goods in the US (imports), you know what they get in return?
US Dollars.
What can they do with those US Dollars?
Buy US goods & services, often at inflated prices compared to Americans, which is in turn beneficial to American companies.
Otherwise they have to buy back their own currency, which would make their own goods more expensive, and American goods get less expensive, so then the trade deficit would shift the other way.
whats with the prevalence of these chin-strap beards lately?
tryna save money on razors by cutting back on shaving or what?
>>70075798
Free trade increases net wealth but decreases wealth distribution between nations engaged in trade. So you can either be wealthier, or more wealthy than external nations. Pick your poison.
>>70076862
Whites with no Kebab genes(not spanish, Italian,etc) don't grow moustaches.
>>70075798
They're basically giving the U.S. free money for exporting American jobs to their countries.
The U.S. gives them U.S. dollars to party for the good they sold to the U.S., but they never use those dollars to buy American things, instead just piling them up as "foreign currency reserve."
The problem now is that the Chinese elite is using the dollars to buy up real estate in the U.S. instead of spending them on American made goods.
>>70077316
uh...yea we do
>>70076790
that made no sense at all. you literally just said that us dollars can buy foreign goods but then a couple sentenses later you say us dollars can only buy us goods and services. are you retarded?
>>70076542
If you don't make anything, that means there's nothing to sell, if there's nothing to sell that means no ones buying. The economy stops circulating.
>>70077552
when you buy a toyota, do you pay in yen?
>>70078776
us dollars can be used to buy foreign goods
If you were an economy driven by exports (like china, mexico and some other third country shitholes) youd be fucked. But US economy is largely driven by internal consumption (as well as your consumption drives other countries). You are only getting more goods way cheaper for your consumers, those goods even when not made in america generate jobs for all the people involved in the distribution chain (at the same times it can fuck US producers). It is not as easy and trivial to know if it is good or bad for your country, but is way easier to know if it is good or bad for a given socioeconomic bracket.
Here, nafta has been good to big companies who export lot of shit (so, to rich fags), good for urban poor people for the manufacturing jebs, and pretty shitty to middle class
>>70080081
Toyota sells a car in the US and gets US dollars back from the American customer. Toyota can't take those US dollars back to Japan to buy something in Japan, even a foreign good sold there; he needs yen to buy anything IN Japan. So, he either needs to use/invest those US dollars INSIDE the US (buy buying land, building factories, renting office space), otherwise he needs to buy back his own currency first
this guy is remarkably ugly
Funny how /pol/acks see him as some sort of aryan standard bearer
>>70081474
Feel free to post your face anon
looked at from a very high viewpoint, a "trade deficit" of a monetarily sovereign country means that they can give away currency that you yourself create in exchange for real goods. give away whatever, get real stuff in return. that's what's currently happening.
of course it's not a bad idea to get the rest of the world to run deficits against you in trade as well, the donald will try that and hopefully will succeed. there's just the question of whether burgers want to start giving real goods away (if they have plenty for themselves - why not).
>>70076626
You make it sound like there's such a thing as real money. Everyone is participating in this jewish game of pretend.
>>70081984
Money is supposed to represent real value. Things went to shit when people started investing money into more money. The whole concept of inflation is absurd.
>>70078552
cheaper goods is just as beneficial to a man as income from their job. doing less work for more stuff is called profit. we do a little work, china does a lot of work, and we get smartphones. we win. ever heard a penny saved is a penny earned?
>>70075798
So why are all the great economic powers - China, Japan, Germany, all dependent on good trade and large surpluses?
