The Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released the April trade figures this morning.
The news is bad.
The trade deficit measures how much more we buy from other countries than they buy from us. It is a way to measure loss of jobs, loss of factories, loss of expertise, loss of supply chains, loss of money and loss of national opportunity.
Imagine American factories and other businesses receiving an additional $44.2 billion in orders last month, and every single month, and you can visualize the effect of this trade deficit. How many people would be hired due to an additional $44.2 billion in orders? How many suppliers would get a boost in orders? How many local businesses surrounding these thriving factories would be getting extra business? That is a measure of how many people are not working and how much economic damage is being done because of the trade deficit. Think about the effect of that, repeated every single month, and you are seeing the effect of the trade deficit.
Obama's best thinking was to push for a U.S.-Korea free trade agreement which he sold to Congress in 2011 (yes they ignorantly approved it making them guilty too). This was going to boost our economy and “create jobs” they told us dumb voters.
The result: The U.S. goods deficit with South Korea reached a new record in April, having gone up for the second straight month, to $2.3 billion, from $1.3 billion in March.
On top of that, South Korea is exporting “oil country tubular goods (OCTG)” – pipes and tubes used for petroleum production – to America at prices that appear to be below cost and in ways that appear designed to circumvent international trade laws. Korea doesn’t use these products so their production is entirely about weakening the American steel industry. (See Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “U.S. Steel closes two tubular plants indefinitely, including one in McKeesport.”)
A report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the Law Offices of Stewart and Stewart, titled “Surging Steel Imports Put Up To Half a Million U.S. Jobs at Risk,” finds that half a million jobs are at risk because of these surging steel imports.
The April U.S. goods deficit with China jumped almost a third, to $27.3 billion, from $20.4 billion in March. We also had a $14 billion trade deficit with the European Union and a $7 billion trade gap with Germany, the highest on record.
What's Obama doing? Why pushing for more "free" trade through secret treaty instruments. That's as transparent as it's going to get Americans. You get to see the transparent results of your own deterioration from what they do in secret behind your back.
Enormous, Humongous Trade Deficit Up In April
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