Say Anything Blog

I see North Dakota’s Senator with the best comb over ever is busy whining about America’s trade deficit again.

Protectionists like Dorgan often like to complain that other nations don’t buy as many American-made goods as we buy of their goods.  Dorgan would have you believe that this happens because those other nations want to take advantage of Americans.  That’s not true.  Other nations (like China, for instance) don’t buy as many American-made goods because their citizens aren’t as wealthy as ours and thus cannot afford to buy as much.  It’s just simple math.  Wages here in America are much higher than they are in places like China, so we Americans can buy more Chinese goods than the Chinese can buy American goods.

Saying this might make Dorgan’s head explode, but really the only way to get nations like China to start buying more American goods is to buy the goods they’re selling us and encourage our companies to do business with their companies.  That economic activity will create more jobs in the country we’re dealing, something that will in turn create higher wages for its workers and thus more demand for goods.  Including American goods.

It’s all very simple, yet Byron Dorgan and others would have us believe that the best way to fix the trade deficit is to cut off trade with these nations so that their economies remain stagnant and their workers remain impoverished.

But while we’re on the subject of trade deficits, let me point out that America’s exports are doing just fine.  They are, in fact, higher now than at any other point in our history:

In 2006 U.S. exports grew by 12.7 percent over 2005 to $1.4 trillion, while imports increased 10.5 percent to $2.2 trillion. To compare, in 2005 Japan’s GDP was $4.91 trillion and Russia’s GDP was $733 billion. . . .

Exports comprised 11.1 percent of U.S. GDP in 2006, the highest ever in dollar terms. It was 5.2 percent 50 years ago and 9.6 in 2002.

Given these numbers, one has to wonder why Dorgan feels the way he does.  Is it really about America’s economy, or is Dorgan more worried about protecting union labor forces here in America from competition brought by labor forces abroad?  I’m guessing the latter.

Dorgan’s union pals have caused, with their greed and thuggish anti-business tactics, a lot of America’s manufacturing businesses to move overseas where costs are cheaper.  Dorgan wants to stop that from happening, and thus is against free trade even though it’s good for both our economy and the economies of our trading partners (which is, in turn, good for our economy once again).