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US Imports To Exceed Federal Taxes Collected
Another sign of globalization for the US economy is about to be reached.
Sometime next year—perhaps around Christmas 2007, if current trends continue—the U.S. will hit a milestone. For the first time in recent memory, the cost of imported goods and services will exceed federal revenues. In other words, Americans will soon pay more to foreigners than they do to their national government.
We're almost there now. Imports cost us about $2.2 trillion a year; the federal government collects $2.4 trillion in revenues. Why is that important? Because for the past 70 years, Washington has been the 800-pound gorilla, more powerful by far than any other force in the U.S. economy. That's not true anymore. The federal government remains plenty influential, but the global economy is more so.
This will come as a rude shock to Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the presumptive Speaker of the House, Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the likely chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, and other newly enfranchised leaders in the Democratic Party.
The tone of the article is that the power of the US government to influence the US national economy is going down. High taxes can drive businesses abroad for example. But that does not hold for all industries or all levers of policy. Even the argument that the article makes about the Federal Reserve losing power to control longer term interest rates seems wrong to me. The Fed has huge levers. For example, it could buy up all the debt in the market if it so chose. In other words it can print money. It could also change bank reserve requirements and make other changes to expand or contract the money supply.
That rapid acceleration of imports is made possible by currency exchange rate fixing by East Asian governments. They do this by purchasing US financial instruments in the form of corporate bonds, mortgage bonds, and government bonds. As a result we are going into hock to the world and becoming what Warren Buffett calls "Squanderville". This folly deserves far more attention than it gets from either major US political party.
The argument in the article is that the US government is losing control of the US national economy as the economy becomes driven more by global economic forces.
Since 1995 imports have risen from 12% of gross domestic product to about 17%. And foreign money finances about 32% of U.S. domestic investment, up from 7% in 1995. In other words, the U.S. is more open to the global economy than ever before, and the links run in both directions. Now many of the levers affecting the U.S. economy are located not in Washington but in Beijing, London, and even Mexico City.
Mexico City? I don't think so. Tokyo certainly. Seoul even. Frankfurt and Paris too.
The massive US government funding of medical research has not translated into a trade surplus in medical products. Companies do product development and production abroad for research funded in the US.
But in the brave new world of the global economy, where companies move factories and facilities around the world like game pieces, it's no longer a given that U.S. workers benefit directly from U.S.-funded research. One worrisome example: Despite federal outlays of over $125 billion for medical research over the past five years, the U.S. has a large and growing trade deficit in advanced biotech and medical goods. "The era in which we could assume that increased U.S. public investment in R&D automatically generates domestic growth is over," says Jeff Faux of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
This is especially troubling to me because a decrease in political support for research seems plausible as a result of this trend. How to make more of the results of research translated into products developed and produced in the United States?
One commenter on that article on the Businessweek web site argues that surely we can still benefit from increased spending on education. I do not believe it. In fact, I think education needs to be modernized by recorded lectures and web courses to reduce the amount of labor in schools. Most of the teachers and professors should be automated out of jobs and shifted into more wealth-generating work.
Between 2001 and today, imports rose by three percentage points as a share of GDP, one of the main reasons that job growth was so slow. By comparison, the import share rose by only one percentage point or so in the recoveries of the early 1980s and the early 1990s.
What is billed as a greater integration of the US economy in the world economy is in fact a huge increase in imports coupled to a much smaller growth in exports. The US trade deficit with China has grown from $17.9 billion in January 2006 to $23 billion in September 2006. It has doubled since the January 2004 deficit of $11.5 billion. Going back even further it has quadrupled since 1998. This is what some nutty economists call "free trade". But I'm with Warren Buffett. This nonsense is squanderville. The US is on track to hit another record yearly trade deficit in spite of the drop in oil prices.
y no no lo voy a traducir , se supone que alguien que se crea capaz de debatir este tema debe saber un minimo de ingles. yo no tengo culpa de los sociatas y su puta logse.
solo comentar que aqui vamso camino de lo mismo . ¿en cuanto tendremos el deficit exterior este año?
Another sign of globalization for the US economy is about to be reached.
Sometime next year—perhaps around Christmas 2007, if current trends continue—the U.S. will hit a milestone. For the first time in recent memory, the cost of imported goods and services will exceed federal revenues. In other words, Americans will soon pay more to foreigners than they do to their national government.
We're almost there now. Imports cost us about $2.2 trillion a year; the federal government collects $2.4 trillion in revenues. Why is that important? Because for the past 70 years, Washington has been the 800-pound gorilla, more powerful by far than any other force in the U.S. economy. That's not true anymore. The federal government remains plenty influential, but the global economy is more so.
This will come as a rude shock to Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the presumptive Speaker of the House, Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), the likely chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, and other newly enfranchised leaders in the Democratic Party.
The tone of the article is that the power of the US government to influence the US national economy is going down. High taxes can drive businesses abroad for example. But that does not hold for all industries or all levers of policy. Even the argument that the article makes about the Federal Reserve losing power to control longer term interest rates seems wrong to me. The Fed has huge levers. For example, it could buy up all the debt in the market if it so chose. In other words it can print money. It could also change bank reserve requirements and make other changes to expand or contract the money supply.
That rapid acceleration of imports is made possible by currency exchange rate fixing by East Asian governments. They do this by purchasing US financial instruments in the form of corporate bonds, mortgage bonds, and government bonds. As a result we are going into hock to the world and becoming what Warren Buffett calls "Squanderville". This folly deserves far more attention than it gets from either major US political party.
The argument in the article is that the US government is losing control of the US national economy as the economy becomes driven more by global economic forces.
Since 1995 imports have risen from 12% of gross domestic product to about 17%. And foreign money finances about 32% of U.S. domestic investment, up from 7% in 1995. In other words, the U.S. is more open to the global economy than ever before, and the links run in both directions. Now many of the levers affecting the U.S. economy are located not in Washington but in Beijing, London, and even Mexico City.
Mexico City? I don't think so. Tokyo certainly. Seoul even. Frankfurt and Paris too.
The massive US government funding of medical research has not translated into a trade surplus in medical products. Companies do product development and production abroad for research funded in the US.
But in the brave new world of the global economy, where companies move factories and facilities around the world like game pieces, it's no longer a given that U.S. workers benefit directly from U.S.-funded research. One worrisome example: Despite federal outlays of over $125 billion for medical research over the past five years, the U.S. has a large and growing trade deficit in advanced biotech and medical goods. "The era in which we could assume that increased U.S. public investment in R&D automatically generates domestic growth is over," says Jeff Faux of the liberal Economic Policy Institute.
This is especially troubling to me because a decrease in political support for research seems plausible as a result of this trend. How to make more of the results of research translated into products developed and produced in the United States?
One commenter on that article on the Businessweek web site argues that surely we can still benefit from increased spending on education. I do not believe it. In fact, I think education needs to be modernized by recorded lectures and web courses to reduce the amount of labor in schools. Most of the teachers and professors should be automated out of jobs and shifted into more wealth-generating work.
Between 2001 and today, imports rose by three percentage points as a share of GDP, one of the main reasons that job growth was so slow. By comparison, the import share rose by only one percentage point or so in the recoveries of the early 1980s and the early 1990s.
What is billed as a greater integration of the US economy in the world economy is in fact a huge increase in imports coupled to a much smaller growth in exports. The US trade deficit with China has grown from $17.9 billion in January 2006 to $23 billion in September 2006. It has doubled since the January 2004 deficit of $11.5 billion. Going back even further it has quadrupled since 1998. This is what some nutty economists call "free trade". But I'm with Warren Buffett. This nonsense is squanderville. The US is on track to hit another record yearly trade deficit in spite of the drop in oil prices.
y no no lo voy a traducir , se supone que alguien que se crea capaz de debatir este tema debe saber un minimo de ingles. yo no tengo culpa de los sociatas y su puta logse.
solo comentar que aqui vamso camino de lo mismo . ¿en cuanto tendremos el deficit exterior este año?
Forero del todo a cien
