Trade Deficit & Timing

[mrbowler]

I'm starting to believe that a recession might hit sometime next year. JMO


U.S. trade deficit is 2nd highest; jobless claims rise:

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For the year, America's trade deficit is running at a record annual rate of $590 billion, 19% higher than the previous record, last year's $496.5 billion.

In a second economic report Thursday, the Labor Department said the number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits rose 15,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 352,000. The four-week moving average of claims, which smooths out weekly changes, rose 4,000 to a seven-month high of 352,000.

The report on jobless claims reflects a labor market that is continuing to confound economists' expectations. The country added a lower-than-expected 96,000 jobs in September as the unemployment rate held steady at 5.4%.



"A coalition of textile groups asked the administration on Tuesday to limit imports of textiles from China, timing the filing of its case to force the administration to make a preliminary ruling by Nov. 1, the day before the election."

[chippers21]

You cannot have it both ways. If you want to keep jobs and manufacturing here you have to be willing to pay much higher prices. We love bargains. And the bargains all come from overseas. We even want our drugs from Canada, since they are cheaper. I do not think you will ever convince a significant percentage of our society and our government to protect our manufacturers and buy their products. Hence, everything has gone overseas. We have to import these products. Neither political party has anything concrete in mind to help. So- it is only going to get worse.

[mrbowler]

"You cannot have it both ways. If you want to keep jobs and manufacturing here you have to be willing to pay much higher prices. We love bargains. And the bargains all come from overseas. We even want our drugs from Canada, since they are cheaper. I do not think you will ever convince a significant percentage of our society and our government to protect our manufacturers and buy their products. Hence, everything has gone overseas. We have to import these products. Neither political party has anything concrete in mind to help. So- it is only going to get worse."

We are protecting profits for the drug companies right now. The u.s. customer is subsidizing indirectly-by paying higher prices while other nations get lower prices. And many of these drug companies are either United States or European Countries. Ask Mayor about how much these companies are spending on advertising etc.

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"Many of the drugs that can be purchased for so much less in Canada and other nations are not manufactured in those countries at all. Some are made right here in the United States. U.S. drug consumers, however, often must pay up to two or three times what prescription drug consumers in Canada and other countries pay. That’s because in most other industrialized nations the government negotiates drug prices as part of the national health care system."



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Chippers to some degree you are correct, but you can level the playing field, and enforce trade agreements. I won't post all the items, but this gives some items to look into:

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Six Part Plan:

1. Immediate reinstatement of the “Super 301” process to force the Bush administration to
report and act on foreign trade barriers.
2. A 120-day review of all existing trade agreements.
3. Immediate investigation into China’s worker rights abuses, and stepped up funding for
worker’s rights and anti-abusive child labor efforts.
4. Increased resources for trade enforcement and action at the WTO
5. Structural Reforms to enhance small business and high-tech trade enforcement capacity
6. More forceful efforts to stop illegal currency manipulation

THE BUSH RECORD ON TRADE ENFORCEMENT
1. Refusing to Stick Up for Workers Through the WTO Dispute Settlement Mechanism:
Utilizing the WTO dispute settlement mechanism is a widely recognized way of helping reach
negotiated solutions favorable to U.S. interests and of demonstrating the U.S.’s seriousness about trade enforcement. Filing WTO cases is not about litigation for litigations sake – indeed, 75 percent of WTO cases are resolved before litigation is even completed – but about helping secure American rights, sparking growth and helping create higher-wage jobs. The Bush
administration’s record demonstrates a dramatic decline in the use of the WTO mechanism, even for the most well-documented trade violations that the administration itself has identified in its annual trade barriers reports.

The Bush administration has filed only 12 cases with the WTO in more than three
years – an average of about 3 per year.

On average, the Clinton administration brought about as many cases to the WTO each
year as the Bush administration has brought in more than three years in office. In the
six years from the WTO’s creation in 1995 to 2000, the Clinton administration brought
65 cases – an average of 11 per year.

This contrast reflects more than “pent-up demand” in the first few years after the
creation of the WTO in 1995, as Bush administration officials have argued. In its final
three years and three months in office, the Clinton administration filed 32 WTO cases –
more than three times as many as Bush has filed over the same time period.

2. Allowing the U.S. to Be a punching bag in the Global Trading System: The
administration’s unwillingness to assert our nation’s rights and act on the well-documented trade violations may be encouraging other countries to target the U.S. Indeed, the Bush administration has allowed the U.S. to become a punching bag for a constant stream of cases brought by our trading partners over the past three years:

The U.S has been the target of almost one-third of all WTO cases filed since January
2001: While the Bush administration has filed only 12 cases, our trading partners have
brought 32 cases against the U.S. These cases have been brought by our largest trading
partners and our closest competitors, including Canada (eight cases), Brazil (five cases),
the EU (five cases), Mexico (four cases), South Korea (two cases), Japan (two cases),
China (one case) India (one case), New Zealand (one case), Taiwan (one case).

From 1995-2000, the Clinton administration filed 16 more WTO cases than all our
trading partners filed against the U.S. combined. During the 1990s, our trading partners
were not shy about filing cases against the U.S., initiating 49 from 1995-2000. Yet with
an administration willing to represent the rights of U.S. workers in the global trading
system, the U.S. government filed 65 WTO cases against our trading partners during that
period.