I was mostly amused by Karl Rove’s imagined meeting among the countries whose imports from the U. S. exceed their exports in the Wall Street Journal:
I recently received a dossier concerning an emergency meeting by some of America’s trading partners at the Illuminati headquarters in Venice. The document came to me by sources and methods of intelligence I’m not at liberty to share. But for the record, Fusion GPS and its agents played no role in procuring or preparing this dossier.
What united the 138 nations gathered in Venice? Each country imports more from the U.S. than it exports. Together they formed the international advisory group known as Countries Shafted by Bad Trade Deals with the U.S., or Cosbatdus. They were meeting to discuss how to respond to President Trump’s protectionist actions.
A representative from Hong Kong, which has the largest trade deficit with the U.S., led the meeting. His vice chairmen—from the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates and Belgium, other large-deficit nations—assisted. The agenda and recommendations were prepared by the Cosbatdus executive committee. It consists of Australia, Chile, Egypt, Ethiopia, Honduras, Iceland, Mongolia, Morocco, the Netherlands and Vatican City—with all of which the U.S. has a trade surplus.
but I was brought up short there. The total exports, not net exports but exports mind you, of goods and services by the United States is around $2.3 trillion and imports are around $2.9 trillion. Exports are increasing but imports are increasing faster. I question the veracity of both of those figures for reasons I’ve explained before but that’s another subject. The total trade deficit was around $600 billion and $375 billion of that was with China alone.
Is Hong Kong part of China or not? Our total exports to Hong Kong are about $40 billion. If you subtract from our trade deficit with China, China still constitutes more than half of our total trade deficit. Germany and Japan account for another $130 billion in deficit.
Forget the teeny tiny amount of trade the U. S. has with Vatican City or Iceland. If you add up the entirety of our exports to the bottom two-thirds of those 138 countries, it probably doesn’t amount to .5% of our GDP.
But let’s not reckon our trade deficit by city. That way lies madness. We need policies for fixing our problems with the biggest offenders—China, Germany, and Japan.
