Buying from outside the US:
Most people don’t think it’s a bad thing to buy from China. I tend to agree with that because most people would rather pay less for item than more. It only becomes a problem when as a country we don’t sell enough of our U.S goods overseas. The fact is the United States imports a lot more than it exports. The United States ranks as one of the world’s worst countries with a negative trade balance of over 800 billon. Simply said we are buying 800 billon more of goods than we are selling overseas.
Countries such as Germany, Japan, China all run positive trade balance well over 100 billon or so. If these numbers don’t impact you think about the following: when an individual buys a TV from Japan it implies the following; you are selling U.S dollars and are buying Japanese Yen to pay for that T.V. Not a big deal per transaction, but when you multiply that by the billons it becomes a very big deal. Because as we continue to buy more than we sell- we have to sell a lot of US dollars to buy these things.
So as long as these numbers remain out of whack- the value of the US dollar will continue to depreciate. In other words it will take ever increasing amounts of dollars to pay for things.
Last week we had Congress holding hearings on baseball with proposed plans to hold hearings on football. With our dollars being debased every day and inflation ramping up- our Congress has decided to focus on something as trivial as baseball. Instead of focusing on something substantive, they have decided to focus in on the trivial. The fact is the American public is getting what they deserved-we voted for this Congress. We all are responsible. What is hard for a Congressman to talk about is how taxes and regulations is strangling our economy and leading us to this mess.
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