Archive for January, 2015

Is there a Relationship Between our Trade Deficits and our National Debt?

Tuesday, January 27th, 2015

In his State of the Union address, President Obama asked Congress for Fast Track trade authority to move forward on the two trade agreements that have been in negotiations behind closed doors for the past four years: The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and the Trans-Atlantic Trade Agreement. I have already written several articles about why Fast Track Authority should not be granted and the dangers of the TPP. The purpose of this article is to show that there is a relationship between our trade deficits and our national debt. As shown by the chart below, we now have a more than $18 trillion national debt.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_public_debt

Notice how it sharply ramps up starting in 2001. The recessions of 2001-2002 and 2008-2009 obviously played a significant factor in the increase in the national debt from $5.8 trillion in 2001 to its present level, because during recessions, there is a decrease in tax revenues and an increase in spending for unemployment benefits, food stamps, and other assistance, as well as spending on programs to attempt to stimulate the economy.

However, 2001 also coincides with the first full year of trade with China under the rules of World Trade Organization after “Congress agreed to permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status,” which “President Clinton signed into law on October 10, 2000,” paving “the way for China’s accession to the WTO in December 2000.”

According to Alan Uke’s book, Buying Back America, the United States now has a trade deficit with 88 countries. Of course, some deficits are small, but some are enormous, such as China. According to the Census Bureau, our top seven trading partners are: Canada, China, Mexico, Japan, Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. These seven countries represent 50.9% of our total trade deficit $ -461.3 billion for January – November 2014. At an average deficit of $40 billion per month, the 2014 trade deficit will exceed $500 billion. Our 2014 trade deficit with China alone was $-$314.3 billion for January – November, representing 68% of the total.

Some may claim that we are still the leader in advanced technology products, but this is no longer true. The U. S. has been running a trade deficit in these products since 2002, which has grown to an astonishing average of nearly $90 billion per year since 2010.

Even our most recent trade agreement, the Korea U. S. Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA), which went into effect on March 2012 has had negative impact. The Office of the   Last March, the U. S. Trade Representative for the Obama Administration touted, “Since the Korea agreement went into effect, U.S. exports to Korea are up for our manufactured goods, including autos, exports are up for a wide range of our agricultural products, and exports are up for our services.” However, the reality is that our imports continued to exceed our exports, and the U. S. trade deficit with Korea jumped from -$13.62 billion in 2011 to -$22,838.3 billion through November 2014, which is a 60% increase in two and a half years.

china trade deficitSource:  http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-us-trade-deficit-with-china-2013-4

Notice that there is a similar upward slope on the above graph to the upward slope of our national debt chart. Anyone can see that our trade deficits have a significant impact on our national debt.

The only thing that kept our trade deficits from being higher than they have been is that fact that we have increased the exports of services to balance our imports of goods as shown by the following chart:

 

Year Total Goods Services
1999 -$258,617 billion -$337,068 billion $78,450 billion
2000 -$372,517 billion -$446,783 billion $74,266 billion
2002 -$418,955 billion -$475,245 billion $56,290 billion
2004 -$609,883 billion -$782,804 billion $68,558 billion
2006 -$761,716 billion -$837,289 billion $75,573 billion
2008 -$708,726 billion -$832,492 billion $123,765 billion
2010 -$494,658 billion -$648,678 billion $154,020 billion
2012 -$537,605 billion -$742,095 billion $204,490 billion
2014 -$461,336 billion -$673,612 billion $212,277 billion

Source: https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/exhibit_history.pdf

As you can see, our trade deficit in goods more than doubled from 1999 to 2004 and reached astronomical heights just before the worldwide recession.

So how do our trade deficits add to the national debt? One way is that many products, especially consumer products, which were previously made in the U. S., are now made in China or other Asian countries, so we are importing these products instead of exporting them to other countries. The offshoring of manufacturing of so many products has resulted in the loss 5.8 million American manufacturing jobs and the closure of over 57,000 of manufacturing firms. These American workers and companies paid taxes that provided revenue to our government, so now we have less tax revenue and pay to pay for the benefits and public assistance for the unemployed and underemployed.

Our balance of payments indebtedness for trade and the additional cost to the government paid by taxpayers for these benefits has resulted in our escalating national debt. The cheaper China price of goods that we import instead of producing here in the U. S. results in a cost to society as a whole. We need to ask ourselves: Is the China price worth the cost to society?

I say a resounding NO! We need to stop shooting ourselves in the feet. We need to stop benefiting the one percent of large multinational corporations to the detriment of the 99% percent of smaller American companies.

Beyond stopping Fast Track Authority and the Trans-Pacific Partnership from being approved, we need to focus on achieving “balanced trade” in any future trade agreement. Until we change the goal of trade agreements, we should refrain from negotiating any trade agreement. The last thing we need is to increase our trade deficit more than it already is.

In addition, we need to facilitate returning more manufacturing to America by changing our tax policies and making regulations less onerous to manufacturers, without compromising our commitment to protect our environment. This is the only way that we will simultaneously reduce our trade deficit and the national debt.

 

Looking Back at 2014 and Ahead to 2015

Tuesday, January 20th, 2015

Most economists are predicting a rosy forecast of more than 3 percent expansion for the U.S. economy in 2015, up from 2.3% in 2014. If it does, this “would mark the first time in a decade that growth has reached that level for a full calendar year.” The unemployment rate is also predicted to drop from the current 5.6 percent to 5.3 percent. The questions are: How much will American manufacturing benefit from this expansion and how many manufacturing jobs will be created?

While the country gained 252,000 jobs in December, only 17,000 were manufacturing jobs according the monthly report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ? “In December, …Manufacturing added an average of 16,000 jobs per month in 2014, compared with an average gain of 7,000 jobs per month in 2013.”

This was a significant increase over the previous year, but notice that President Obama recently stated that “more than 764,000 manufacturing jobs have been gained since the end of the recession.” This means that we still have a long way to go to recoup the 5.8 million manufacturing jobs that we lost between the years 2000 – 2009. According to Scott Paul, President of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, “…December’s manufacturing job gains were behind the previous month, and that halfway through the president’s second term, the country is just over one-quarter of the way to his pledge to create 1 million new manufacturing jobs in that four-year span.”

While the U3 unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent, the U6 rate is double at11.2 percent. The U-6 rate includes “Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.”

In a recent article, business reporter Jonathan Horn of the San Diego Union-Tribune noted, “the unemployment rate fell in part because people dropped out of the labor force ? they either retired or left the labor force. Last month, the number of unemployed persons fell 383,000 to 8.7 million. However, less than one-third of people out of work found jobs; the rest stopped looking. The percentage of Americans who are either working or looking for work fell back to a 37-year low last touched in September.”

The January 6-11, 2015 edition of the San Diego Business Journal’s reported that manufacturing jobs in San Diego increased by 3.3 percent from November 2013 through November 2014, for a total of 97,400 industry jobs, up by 3,100 jobs. However, we still have a long way to go to get back to the 122,600 manufacturing jobs in the San Diego region we had at the end of 1999.

Two manufacturing sectors led the job growth in San Diego: shipbuilding and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones.) General Dynamics’ Nassco division has contracts for five commercial tankers and one Navy ship and plans to “add about 300 additional jobs to the shipbuilder’s staff, bringing the total workforce to about 3,500.” General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc’s “local employment grew 9 percent year over year to 4,843 as of June 2014.”

In this same article, I was quoted as saying, “For those with skills and experience in a particular industry, things were definitely trending up in 2014…This (2014) has been a year when people could find jobs.” I’m also quoted as saying, “San Diego greatly diversified its economy following the previous major recession in the early 1990s, and that’s made a huge difference in the past several years…One of our strengths is that we’re not hurt as much from the lack of new defense programs.”

Looking Back at 2014

The R&D tax credit that had expired December 31, 2013 was extended for 2014, but has now expired again as of December 31, 2014. The R&D Tax Credit was originally introduced in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 sponsored by Rep. Jack Kemp and Senator William Roth. The credit has expired eight times and has been extended fifteen times. The frequent expiration of this tax credit creates unnecessary uncertainty for business investment planning. The R&D Credit Coalition, National Association of Manufacturers, and many other business groups recommend that this tax credit be made permanent.

One bright spot on the national scene is that a bill requiring a National Strategic Plan for Manufacturing authored by Rep. Daniel Lipinski (D-IL) and Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) became law right before Christmas. Three of Lipinski’s previously authored bills had passed the House three times over the past five years, but failed to either pass or be considered in the Senate. This bill was included in legislation that passed both houses and was signed into law by the President. U.S. Senators Mark Kirk (R-IL) and Chris Coons (D-DE) and Mark Pryor (D-AK) introduced the language in the Commerce, Science and Justice Appropriations bill passed by the Senate.

Rep. Lipinski stated, “After many years of hard work, my bipartisan legislation to boost domestic manufacturing and American jobs by. The bill requires that at least every four years the president works with public and private stakeholders to produce and publish a plan to promote American manufacturing. In addition, every year the president’s budget blueprint will have to contain an explanation of how it promotes the most recent manufacturing strategy. This bill guarantees that Washington has to pay attention to what can be done to help manufacturers and workers. Getting this provision into law can really make a difference by leading to economic growth, increased American security, and more middle class jobs that pay hard-working Americans a good wage. I look forward to finding many more “Made in USA” labels on products we see in our stores and online.”

In June 2013, I wrote an article criticizing an earlier version of this bill, H.R. 2447, the American Manufacturing Competitiveness Act of 2013, and was contacted by Rep. Lipinski’s Chief of Staff to discuss my criticisms. I am anxious to see whether or not the current language included in the Commerce, Science and Justice Appropriations bill addressed these criticisms.

In his 2014 State of the Union address, President Obama pledged to launch four new manufacturing institutes this year, for a total of eight institutes launched so far on an original goal of creating 15 manufacturing innovation institutes. On December 11th, President Obama announced that” the government will invest more than $290 million in public-private investment for two new Manufacturing Innovation Hub Competitions.

One will be in smart manufacturing at the Department of Energy and one in flexible hybrid electronics at the Department of Defense. Each institute will receive $70 million or more of federal investment to be matched by at least $70 million from the private sector for a total of more than $290 million in new investment.”

“The Department of Defense will lead a competition for a new public-private manufacturing innovation institute in flexible hybrid electronics…The Department of Energy will lead a competition for a new public-private manufacturing innovation institute focused on smart manufacturing, including advanced sensors, control, platforms, and models for manufacturing…” The press release invites interested applicants to find more information on the manufacturing innovation institute competitions at www.manufacturing.gov.

While funding manufacturing institutes may have a long-term benefit similar to funding research at other government institutions, there are actions that President Obama and Congress could take that would have a more immediate benefit on the manufacturing industry and create more jobs, such as making the R&D tax credit permanent, addressing currency manipulation by our foreign trading partners, easing taxes to repatriate corporate profits, and actually doing comprehensive tax reform. Let us hope that the economic predictions of a better 2015 than 2014 will come true and that more manufacturing jobs will be created by even more companies returning manufacturing to America.