Saturday, October 3, 2020

👉US Trade Deficit Ballooning Even after Years of Tariffs , Trade Deals & Trade Wars !!

👉US Trade Deficit Ballooning Even after Years of Tariffs , Trade Deals & Trade Wars !! Trade Deficit Ballooning after Years of Tariffs , Trade Deals & Trade Wars A cratering economy. A soaring trade deficit, the highest since 2008. A record budget deficit, the worst since World War 2. And a ballooning public debt. So much winning. In August, the US trade deficit in goods swells to a whopping $82.9 Billion. The worst trade deficit since the 2008 recession. The commerce department reports U.S. trade is in a deep deficit. The worst we’ve seen since the recession in 2008. And for the month of July, the commerce department reported that the gap between what America buys from other countries and what it’s selling - grew by a record amount - totaling more than 63 billion dollars. That’s nearly 19% higher than just a month before. Trade wars were supposed to be easy to win, how is that China deal working out? How comes our trade deficit continues to climb year by year, and month after month. How's that trade war going! Four years later, billions of dollars in bailouts. American Farmers suffering for nothing. Small family farms have been wrecked. The farm bailouts went to millionaire farmers. So much for bringing all that manufacturing back home and eliminating the trade deficit. Where are all these jobs that would be coming back to the US so we would not have to import much of what we need? Evidently, those tariffs are having no effect, and those trade deals we renegotiated were useless. The tax cut for the wealthy and the corporations were useless too. A tariff is a consumer tax, not a producer's tax. The tariff taxed the people of America. Despite promising to cut the US trade deficit in the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump must now grapple with an even larger gap, after two years of tariffs and the escalating trade war with China. Meanwhile, China has announced TikTok is now on a list of Chinese companies prohibited from exchanging technology with the US. The US international trade deficit jumped again in August. Advance Indicators The Census Bureau reported on Advance Economic Indicators for August. Advance International Trade in Goods: The US trade deficit in goods climbs 3.5% in August to record $82.9 billion. The U.S. trade deficit surged 18.9% in July to $63.6 billion from an upwardly revised $53.5 billion in June. This is the widest trade deficit since 2008. Exports of goods for August were $118.3 billion, $3.2 billion more than July exports. Imports of goods for August were $201.3 billion, $6.0 billion more than July imports. Advance Wholesale Inventories: Wholesale inventories for August, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $637.0 billion, up. Imports of foreign goods such as autos and consumer goods climbed 3.1% in August to $201.3 billion and returned to pre-pandemic levels. The same can’t be said for exports. The snapback in imports shows Americans are more willing to buy more cell phones, BMWs, and other goods they’ve long sought from overseas suppliers. Imports sank early in the pandemic due to disruptions in global trade and depressed demand after millions of Americans lost their jobs. There’s a strong correlation between Amazon's success and the number of imports. Not to mention declines in foreign investment into the US. But as long as the US can pay with paper dollars, which can be produced at essentially zero cost, it's a good deal. We'll see how long that lasts! In trade, you only need two players, one is willing to buy, and one is willing to sell. Nobody, I mean absolutely nobody, is forcing America to buy anything from China. Therefore, if the USA insists on balancing the trade, then just stop buying goods from China instead of demanding China to buy more from us. We know that Boeing 737 MAX planes are simply unsafe. Otherwise I bet China would have bought them to reduce our trade deficit. The ultimate solution is for the USA to step up to the plate by manufacturing something that other countries want. Wake up America! Welcome back to The Atlantis Report. You are here for your daily dose of the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Please take a second to click the like button. And as You know friends, I rely on your donations to keep this channel functional; as you know, it takes a crazy amount of research and time to bring you this content on a daily basis, so I hope you consider helping with whatever donation you can afford. Thank You. The trade war caused China to retaliate, causing China to shift it's buying of soybeans to Brazil. Also stopping its buying of pork. In the beginning, President Xi announced he would cut tariffs on cars and car parts from the US and make more purchases of agricultural goods, reducing the China / US trade deficit by 50 billion the first year and 100 billion the second. Trump could have taken a victory lap. However, Trump wants to eliminate the entire 500 billion trade deficit, which would have been impossible to do. The US doesn't even manufacture any household electronics. You can't flip a switch and build manufacture plants or have qualified workers in the US overnight. More winning and Creating an awesome number of factory jobs. If so, how come we are still importing more than we are exporting. I smell a snake in the woodpile. Creating an awesome number of factory jobs; yes, by opening up NAFTA. What a joke that was. The US had a trade surplus with Canada at the time Trump was mouthing off at them. The only time the US had any significant trade deficit with Canada was when the US Dollar dropped because of a US banking crisis in 2008. Mexico could be another story, but a sledgehammer was used where a screwdriver was called for, and I'm not even sure any jobs were repatriated from Mexico. I doubt it. The deal was so good to the Mexicans they stabbed the Canadians in the back to quickly sign it. So, where did trashing NAFTA get us? Mexican autoworkers got a pay raise, and the US got a sliver of a Canadian dairy quota that was theirs already if they stayed in TPP. The rest is just a bunch of content malarkey that will cost businesses as they are now forced to restructure manufacturing shipments to comply with regulations. No jobs were created. No trade surpluses/deficits were eliminated. And for the record, we had a trade surplus already with Canada. But Trump danced around like he had got a big win and insisted on calling the new agreement USMCA in the US, CAMUS, in Canada, and MUSCA in Mexico. How silly. But my God did his base lap it up. The US stock market is not the global economy; Main street and Wall Street are two totally different places. FED is keeping rates artificially low and a big buyer in the equity markets. Where should you go as an investor for some profits? Government bonds at 0, both investment grade and junk almost at risk-free premiums right now. Stocks and real estate are the bubbles created and inflated by the FED (yet again). Do not fight them until they surrender! An economy is built on technology, plant and equipment, infrastructure, and labor force. The currency simply allows transfer between these productive sectors. The Chinese have high production assets; the US is depleted. Currencies can always be canceled and reissued on a new footing. Other countries have huge trade surpluses, which bolster their financial system and economy. The US has huge trade deficits and huge budget deficits and a ballooning public debt, and businesses carry an enormous pile of debt, but the economy and financial system are propped up by the US dollar’s role as the dominant global reserve currency – a currency that every central bank must hold in large amounts. The idea the US has monetized billions and won't be hurt by China selling off its US Treasury Notes is not accurate. US companies purchase Chinese-made goods, often at 1/10th of what they are sold for at retail in the US. China's cheap labor makes it possible for the US to add 10-times value to the product. Often Chinese companies don't even know if they made a profit as they have very poor accounting and are unsure of the profit margins when they sell goods to the US. The main objective is for China to capture US dollars. A wire transfer to a Chinese company first goes to the Chinese government bank that accepts US dollars and then forwards payment to the Chinese manufacturer in the Chinese Yuan. But the US goes back to China and says to China; you have all of our money. We can't buy more Chinese-made goods. So if you lend us back the money, we can buy more goods from China. So China lends the money back to the US + 2% interest in US Treasury Note, which is nothing more than an IOU. The US does the same with Middle Eastern suppliers of oil. Henry Kissinger flew to the Middle East to negotiate what became the Petro Dollar. The US buys oil, and Middle Eastern countries now have US dollars they lend back to the US + 2% interest in exchange for an IOU (US Treasury Note). Now, if China sells off, let's say $250 billion (25%) of its $1 trillion of IOUs to another party at say -30% of its original value, then the US dollar loses 30% of its value in international trade. Americans can still buy pizza at the same price in the US, but if buying goods made in China or another foreign country, the dollar lost 30% of its value, and foreign goods imported into the US would cost +30% more. Monetizing here in the US has nothing to do with any of this. The US just becomes awash in funny money, and we keep buying goods from China but at a higher price. By the US monetizing (making money out of thin air) and guaranteeing incomes (the $600/week to restaurant workers), there is money in the economy to buy stuff. But there is no productivity, only welfare. Keep going in this direction, and the US GDP becomes a measure of welfare, not productivity. This is because ~70% of the US economy is consumer goods. The balance of trade with our foreign trading partners is -$500 billion/year on the US side. Trump wanted China to lower that by $200 billion. Actually, if the US sold China natural gas, the $200 billion reduction goal in trade imbalance could be made up in a single contract. Furthermore, Trump commissioned the General Accounting Office to appraise the value of US assets, kind of like totaling the value of all the houses and hotels when playing the Monopoly table game. Recall, Trump is a real estate guy. So US Government Accountability Office says the US owns $200 trillion of assets (empty post offices, oil leases, etc.). Trump wants to sell off $16 trillion of that national debt (the US would sell off its empty post offices, oil leases, etc.) to China, Japan, whoever holds those IOUs (US Treasury Notes). The national debt is said to be ~$27 trillion, but we owe some of that money to ourselves. So once Trump takes the national debt to zero, we become a creditor nation rather than a debtor nation, and we save ~$574 billion in interest payments annually. So the national debt problem could be rectified. But the US likes the status quo where it just leaves foreign traders with worthless IOUs (US Treasury Notes) and has the foreign-made products to boot! To add to the destruction, there are Chinese importers in the USA. When a US company buys goods from China, the Chinese manufacturer lists less quantity of goods than are actually shipped in its bill of lading. So let's say China is exporting 500 thousand widgets to the US. There will actually be 1 million widgets in the shipping containers. So then the Chinese importer in the US now has twice the amount of goods in his hands and goes to the US buyer of widgets and says he can supply the US company with another 500,000 widgets at a lower price, but it must be in cash. Then the Chinese importer in the US keeps a small portion of this booty for himself and puts the remainder in cash in a Chinese-operated US-based bank that keeps this cash in a back room with paper records, not electronic records. Then the manufacturer of the widgets in China sends his wife and kids over to the US, and they just go to the Chinese bank in the US and pick up their US paper money and put it in briefcases and go around and buy homes in the US for cash. So the US ends up with the widgets and the money, if you can imagine. Last time I read about this, the US had actually siphoned around $5 trillion out of China this way. Don't say the US isn't cunning. China wants the US to stop allowing this hidden money coming into the US from China in the form of unaccounted-for goods. But the US looks the other way. That's how the game works. Worthless piece of a digital dollar backed by nothing in exchange for goods and services from other countries. It is not a bad deal at all until it is one day! This was The Atlantis Report. Please Like. Share. Leave me a comment. Subscribe. And please take some time to subscribe to my back up channels; I do upload videos there too. 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Nouriel Roubini is an American professor of Economics at New York University`s Stern School of Business and chairman of RGE Roubini Global Economics

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