The impact of US imports from China had a much bigger impact on Mexico then anyone ever though NAFTA would have.

Record trade deficit announced this morning.

Real wages sag for most Americans, but we can buy cheap stuff.

If the Democrats cannot take advantage of this they deserve to be a minority party for the next 1000 years.

So how is the trade deficit explained (I've not the time to read the entire article now);

Note my new address (I've and all my fellows have been outsourced and we are presently positioning to retrain our replacements from Malaysia).

Have a nice day.

P. S. I agree with the rustbelt dude.

If putting more money in my pocket means suffering some kind of hollow crisis like the so-called "trade deficit", then let's suffer that crisis every day. Lower manufacturing costs mean, in may cases, higher margins for American retailers. Also, rustbelt, please explain how foreign investment in the U.S. is somehow bad for us?

Question is how long this will last. The chinese are moving up the value chain quickly in manufacturing. Ditto for India in services. Will US residents end up making their living selling houses to each other ?

What portion of imports are now oil? That is likely the reason Asian imports have fallen.

While highly paid manufacturing employment here has been impacted, remarkably few blue-collar jobs are open to globalization. The largest impact will be on white-collar computer desk jobs.

Lord is right.

Dan -- remember, imports to GDP are a bit higher now than in 1990, so a constant share of US imports implies that asian imports are rising relative to GDP. And that has come in the face of a terms of trade shift that has favors the US. One t-bill export buys more Asian goods than it ever has ...

I have not done the asian share of US exports back to 1990, but I suspect it has fallen too.

I thought the article was a bit confused. Is he trying to say that components are being made in Japan for assembly in China, or is he trying to say that Japanese companies have an ownership interest in the businesses that assemble in China?

In electronics, there are lots of components that are made in places like Malaysia, many of them no doubt going into products assembled in China.

All a bit reminiscent of the days when the Brits enjoyed cheap imports from the USA.

I liked the next 2 lines from the article:

"Because so many different hands in different places touch a particular product, Mr. Dong said, you might as well throw away the trade figures.

"In a globalized world, bilateral trade figures are irrelevant," he argued. "The trade balance between the U.S. and China is as irrelevant as the trade balance between New York and Minnesota."

Don:

What we were told:

"Trade and foreign investment will make Americans more prosperous."

What really happened:

"Trade made some Americans much more prosperous and many Americans much less prosperous."

Big difference!

No end in sight.

"In a globalized world, bilateral trade figures are irrelevant," he argued. "The trade balance between the U.S. and China is as irrelevant as the trade balance between New York and Minnesota."

Well, no. As an American (or Mexican ;)) you can freely migrate to Minnesota from New York, and vice-versa.

But

You cannot migrate to China freely (according to Peter Brimelow, in Alien Nation (1995) ... he called the embassies of the top five migrant sending countries ...Indian , you can migrate only if of Indian descent , China, no go at all!)

Even if you could, somehow I doubt that the average Jane or Joe could get a job in China, I suspect they have fairly high levels of 'xenophobia'. Probably not much in the was of antidiscrimination laws...but I am open to correction on this.

The problem with modern economics is that it ignores both politics and culture, and so economists end up saying ridiculous things like the statement above.

A white male American former co-worker of a mine (he did software QA for a now defunct US company we both used to work for) just moved to Shanghai and has gotten a software job there. His wife is native Chinese (they met in the US), so maybe that's why he was allowed to go. Anyway, it's not *impossible* to go there, it seems.

It's quite easy to live and work in China--Chinese citizenship is what is difficult to get (then again, who would want to be a citizen of that odious regime?)

"Because so many different hands in different places touch a particular product, Mr. Dong said, you might as well throw away the trade figures.."In a globalized world, bilateral trade figures are irrelevant," he argued. "The trade balance between the U.S. and China is as irrelevant as the trade balance between New York and Minnesota."

How about the trade balance between, say, three P&L business units within the same company: one that makes semiconductors, a second that assembles these semiconductors onto circuit boards, and a third that uses the circuit boards as components of finished products? Such "trade balances" are certainly tracked; first, because such tracking is necessary to evaluate the economic performance of the business units; second, because they must be properly eliminated to calculate the results for the overall corporation.

Sold out by the economists; according to his guy:

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02112006.html

How about it Dan?