patrick.net

Troy says

And as I said above it's the trade deficits that are killing us now. We spend our paychecks at Walmart and the gas station, but the money that's leaving our economy is not coming back as orders for stuff here. It's coming back in the form of 0% credit offers, treasury bill purchases, and other asset purchases like real estate investments, stocks, and outright buyouts of our businesses.

Troy, you did a good job explaining that. Okay, so the trade deficit is a big problem. Shouldn't we just level the playing field? I know there are standards in place that let other countries ship as much inventory into the country but restrict how much we can ship back. That is killing us, and of course cheap overseas labor. Second, I really hope we are sitting on a massive lake of oil somewhere and are just trying to suck the Arabs dry of all their oil. It would be nice to have a conspiracy theory that worked in our favor for once.

Okay, just learned some new words today. Triffin Dilemma and renteirism (I thought you were making that one up).

We might be looking at a lost decade or more here in the U.S. It is time for a visionary to step in and lead us in the right direction.

The USDA and Custom agencies hasn't expanded much relative to the huge growth of free trade. They no longer have the staff or funding to inspect all but the smallest fraction of imports.

Many would be surprised how much of our fruits, vegetables, and even meat comes from China, a country whose environmental record is the stuff of legend. A substantial portion of ground beef, apples, and garlic come from China to US supermarkets. The big distributors are steadfast in the opposition to labeling on many meat and fish products, and in preventing US Beef from being labelled or inspected by Japanese or other Asian countries.