Sandhusker
Well-known member
DiamondSCattleCo said:Sandhusker said:China has more population and less natural resources - they seem to be playing the trading game pretty well....
Rod
But they've increased exports to keep pace with their required imports. If you want to balance your trade defecit globally, then tell your government to increase manufacturing and export. Artificially restricting imports will only lead to inflation as your population struggles to get those things that they want or need. Like it or not, the US is a product hungry nation and you can't supply the demand with homegrown products. You simply don't have the natural resources to do it.
Quite frankly, I think the US's biggest problem is in their desire to ship their manufacturing jobs off shore. NOT in a NAFTA agreement which gives them virtually unrestricted access to natural resources which they need. If anything, NAFTA hurt us more in that we were suddenly shipping out our natural resources wholesale, versus processing them in country. It drove up our costs on virtually everything.
Rod
We're kind of going on a tangent here, but that's fun, too. I guess my point was that I didn't see population/resources to be an insurmountable obstacle. The Chinese are doing very, very well with their huge population and limited resources. I think that we largely do have the resources to be more self-sufficient. The problem I see is that our government has decided that short-term corporate profits are more important than the long-term welfare of our country. They seem to have the notion that whats good for corporate America will spread to everybody and that obviously isn't working. I'm also certain that "donations" have more than a little to do with the decision making.
You're right about shipping our manufacturing off shore. Again, it's the corporate profits deal. Here we have local and state governments giving away money to get plants to locate here as they recognize the value that payroll will bring to their local economies, and then we have the Feds making it easy to go offshore. The right hand spites the left and the tax payers get slapped twice.
I'm not advocating restricting imports. I am saying that if we give, there had better be some getting. We kind of have that system now; the taxpayers give and the big corporations get, but that isn't what I'm talking about. We're only planning for the next quarter, not the next decade.
Pre NAFTA, we had trade surpluses with both Canada and Mexico - now we have deficits. NAFTA was also supposed to stem the tide of illegals up here as our purchasing of their products would provide jobs down there - no further comments needed there. All it is is a revenue producer for the multi nationals. Dang, I'm starting to sound like Econ! The problem is, he's got a lot of this crap pegged about right.