Kevin Drum thinks maybe the rush to stimulus ignores the deeper problems facing the U.S. economy.
I continue to wonder if a massive stimulus package that spurs domestic consumption means that just as we propped up the economy in 2002 by replacing the dotcom bubble with a housing bubble, we’re now propping up the economy in 2008 by replacing the housing bubble with continuing support for our ever-ballooning trade deficit bubble …. See Tim Duy for more on this. I don’t know if he’s right, but I don’t feel too bad for bringing this up since no one else really seems to know either.
In any case, I do know that pretty much every economist in the country agrees, in general, that eventually U.S. consumption has to go down, savings have to go up, and we have to start exporting more than we import. It’s just a question of whether we can afford to worry about that with the economy collapsing around our heads. Still, here’s a thought: if this is a serious long-term concern, shouldn’t we at least try to construct a stimulus package that stimulates export industries more than other sectors of the economy? If so, how would we go about doing that? And what else should we be doing to prepare for the day when the current panic subsides, the great T-bill bubble bursts, and the rest of the world decides that 0% yields on treasuries suck and they don’t want to buy any more of them? And what they’d really like instead are some tangible goods and services…?
I don’t know. Maybe we really can’t worry too much about this at the moment. But the trade deficit bubble is going to pop eventually just like the dotcom bubble and the housing bubble. We at least ought to be thinking about this a little bit.
Yeppers. And here he is on the bailout “prepackaged bankruptcy” option.
It actually sounds like a decent compromise to me: it keeps the companies from imploding in the middle of a huge recession, but at the same time it gives a bankruptcy court considerable leeway to impose serious restructuring of the kind that a political process probably can’t. The end result — if it’s done right — is a pair of companies that will end up smaller but still viable in the long term, and an economy that takes only a moderate hit instead of a killing blow.
I mainly agree, but am much less optimistic on their long-term prospects. The key will be how to minimize such “incumbent claims” politically and shift investments to the new idea-driven economy.
December 20th, 2008 at 9:15 am
Our enormous trade deficit is rightly of growing concern to Americans. Since leading the global drive toward trade liberalization by signing the Global Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1947, America has been transformed from the weathiest nation on earth – its preeminent industrial power – into a skid row bum, literally begging the rest of the world for cash to keep us afloat. It’s a disgusting spectacle. Our cumulative trade deficit since 1976, financed by a sell-off of American assets, exceeds $9 trillion. What will happen when those assets are depleted? Today’s recession may be just a preview of what’s to come.
Why? The American work force is the most productive on earth. Our product quality, though it may have fallen short at one time, is now on a par with the Japanese. Our workers have labored tirelessly to improve our competitiveness. Yet our deficit continues to grow. Our median wages and net worth have declined for decades. Our debt has soared.
Clearly, there is something amiss with “free trade.” The concept of free trade is rooted in Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage. In 1817 Ricardo hypothesized that every nation benefits when it trades what it makes best for products made best by other nations. On the surface, it seems to make sense. But is it possible that this theory is flawed in some way? Is there something that Ricardo didn’t consider?
At this point, I should introduce myself. I am author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” My theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption begins to decline. This occurs because, as people are forced to crowd together and conserve space, it becomes ever more impractical to own many products. Falling per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge ramifications for U.S. policy toward population management (especially immigration policy) and trade. The implications for population policy may be obvious, but why trade? It’s because these effects of an excessive population density – rising unemployment and poverty – are actually imported when we attempt to engage in free trade in manufactured goods with a nation that is much more densely populated. Our economies combine. The work of manufacturing is spread evenly across the combined labor force. But, while the more densely populated nation gets free access to a healthy market, all we get in return is access to a market emaciated by over-crowding and low per capita consumption. The result is an automatic, irreversible trade deficit and loss of jobs, tantamount to economic suicide.
One need look no further than the U.S.’s trade data for proof of this effect. Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
Our trade deficit with China is getting all of the attention these days. But, when expressed in per capita terms, our deficit with China in manufactured goods is rather unremarkable – nineteenth on the list. Our per capita deficit with other nations such as Japan, Germany, Mexico, Korea and others (all much more densely populated than the U.S.) is worse. My point is not that our deficit with China isn’t a problem, but rather that it’s exactly what we should have expected when we suddenly applied a trade policy that was a proven failure around the world to a country with one fifth of the world’s population.
Ricardo’s principle of comparative advantage is overly simplistic and flawed because it does not take into consideration this population density effect and what happens when two nations grossly disparate in population density attempt to trade freely in manufactured goods. While free trade in natural resources and free trade in manufactured goods between nations of roughly equal population density is indeed beneficial, just as Ricardo predicts, it’s a sure-fire loser when attempting to trade freely in manufactured goods with a nation with an excessive population density.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”