Underneath Trump’s policies is a profound ignorance of the tight connection between imports and exports. Foreigners sell goods and services to U.S. buyers in order to acquire American dollars. They want these dollars, in part, to buy American exports. So when U.S. imports grow, so do U.S. exports. The reverse is also true: reducing American imports causes Americans to shrink.
More important, and often overlooked: Foreigners want dollars also to invest in America’s powerful economy. That includes (but of course isn’t limited to) buying U.S. Treasury bonds. In consequence, every dollar Americans spend on foreign goods and services comes back to us. As the U.S. trade deficit rises, investment flows into America increase by the same amount. As the nerds say, the current-account deficit is a mirror image of the capital-account surplus. This is why Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute describes imports as “job-generating foreign investment surpluses for a better America.”
Vincent Geloso understandably has had quite enough of the notion of “presidential greatness.”
Tom Nichols is appalled by Bernie Sanders’s bottomless gullibility for tyranny.
Also fearful of Bernie Sanders is Daniel Bennett.
Peter St. Onge isn’t impressed with Canada’s health-care system.
Steve Landsburg urges us to stop-and-think.
Partly because of a worldwide retreat from collectivism, extreme poverty has dramatically decreased. Massive new markets have opened to us. Despite the perception of many, medium household incomes are at an all-time high. The middle class is growing — especially the upper-middle class. In the past 50 years, spending on food and clothing as a share of family income has fallen from 42% to 17%. Your house is probably more expensive than the average house was in 1975, but it’s also more comfortable and safer.
