US / The world’s largest trade deficit kills jobs

Agonizing over U.S. job losses often overlooks a primary cause of the problem: America’s severe trade deficit. Since the 1970s, U.S. imports have exceeded exports every year.

“This deficit, now the world’s largest, kills jobs. It urgently needs to be fixed,” write Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele in their new book, The Betrayal of the American Dream. “It’s time our trade policy was asked to serve the interests of all Americans — not just the markets and the people who control those markets.”

Barlett and Steele, who have won two Pulitzer Prizes for their analytical reporting, believe Congress must limit imports whose manufacture is subsidized by governments, like China, and require those foreign nations to lower barriers that impede U.S. products.

Unfortunately, corporate lobbyists and corporate campaign donations are so powerful that Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress routinely vote to protect interests of major corporations, not the interests of average American workers.

Current warnings about the “fiscal cliff,” for example, often ignore policies that moved millions of American jobs overseas, hurting U.S. workers, small businesses and local communities.

The “outsourced” American jobs are not just unskilled ones, but an increasing number of high-tech and engineering jobs — another fact overlooked in most debates, Barlett and Steele point out.

The Alliance for American Manufacturing — a coalition of major manufacturers, steel companies and the United Steelworkers — makes the same point. “Cheap imports made in unsafe, low-wage factories overseas are not improving the fortunes of American’s least fortunate, much less its middle class,” the AAM said in a 2009 book of essays.

“Manufacturing is the engine of economic growth, not financial wizardry,” Richard McCormick wrote in the book.

In 2010, America shipped 7 percent of its exports to China, while China shipped 23 percent of its total exports to the United States. Between 2000 and 2010, America’s trade deficit with China more than tripled, according to a congressional report.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Trade: Imbalance kills jobs  – Editorials – The Charleston Gazette – West Virginia News and Sports –.

Trade deficit widens, imports and exports decline

The U.S. trade deficit widened in October as exports suffered the biggest drop in nearly four years, indicating slowing global demand is likely to weigh on U.S. economic growth in the fourth quarter.

The Commerce Department said on Tuesday the trade gap increased 4.9 percent to $42.2 billion even as imports declined to the lowest level in 1-1/2 years. September’s trade gap was revised to $40.3 billion from the previously reported $41.6 billion.

Economists polled by Reuters had expected the trade deficit to rise to $42.6 billion in October. The wider trade gap in October reflected a 3.6 percent fall in exports of goods and services to $180.5 billion. That was the biggest percent drop in exports since January 2009.

Exports have been one of the pillars supporting the economy since the 2007-09 recession ended. The pull back was telegraphed by weak manufacturing surveys and reflects slowing global demand, especially in China and debt-ridden Europe.

Choosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor from

via Trade deficit widens, imports and exports decline | Reuters.