I don’t know why, but I feel I am the only one that is so bothered by our imbalance in trade. To me, it is the same as spending more as a household than you make. Eventually you go broke. Your creditors call your notes as you become less able to pay your bills and BK becomes your only choice. But what about America? We continue to import more goods than we export?
But what if we didn’t have to import oil? You know we used cars that got better gas mileage. What if trains and public transportation were increased to off set the use of oil burning and gas burning combustion engines? Every time I drive …. drive to LA, I think why are there so many trucks on the road? Its like they could connect and become a conveyor bel to to LA. Why aren’t there trains? Well we know one hidden fact, that is the oil industry bought up all the trains in LA some 50 or 70 years ago and ripped them out. They did that to increase the demand for gas and oil.
We are looking at a trade deficit of $370 to $400 Billion for 2009 and $265 Billion of that was Oil. Oil is not the only problem, its just a big part of the problem.
Earlier this week we got the Trade Deficit report. Here are a couple of blogs about that issue:
U.S. Trade Gap Widens
The U.S. trade deficit took an unexpected jump in November on the back of higher oil prices, the U.S. Commerce Department said in a press release Tuesday.
At $36.40 billion, the U.S. trade deficit rose 9.7 percent from the $33.2 billion revised deficit recorded in October. November’s trade deficit marked a 10-month high.
Although the U.S. imported a nearly 10-year low volume of oil in November, it was offset by the rising prices. Oil prices jumped to their highest level since October 2008, rising $5.15 per barrel to $72.54 per barrel.
The rising price of oil was enough to offset a jump in exports as well, which grew at a rate of 0.9 percent in November. Exports in food products, automotive parts and capital goods all helped to increase the month-over-month export total in November
However, that was no match for the growth in imports. Imports rose 2.6 percent to $174.6 billion. In November, the U.S. increased its imports of consumer and capital goods and industrial supplies.
One of the few bright spots of the report was the fact that the U.S. narrowed its trade gap with China in November. In fact, exports to China increased to a record $7.33 billion, closing the November trade gap with China to $20.22 billion. The growth in exports to China was largely due to a drought in Argentina that disrupted much of that country’s soy bean production. The U.S. has stepped in to fill the void.
That, however, was offset by the fact that the U.S. trade deficit with Japan rose to $5.43 billion in November and $5.14 billion with Mexico.
The U.S. trade deficit is a major drag on the economy and represents a failure of American trade policy. Much of the job loss in America today can be attributed to direct competition with foreign competitors such as China, which has much, much lower labor and environmental standards than the U.S.
In fact, billionaire Warren Buffett said in 2006 that the trade deficit was perhaps the gravest danger of all to the health of the U.S. economy.
“The U.S trade deficit is a bigger threat to the domestic economy than either the federal budget deficit or consumer debt and could lead to political turmoil… Right now, the rest of the world owns $3 trillion more of us than we own of them,” he told the Associated Press. http://www.economyincrisis.org/content/us-trade-gap-widens
And from the Pickens Plan:
Army,
I’m going to get straight to the point of this email.
We imported 4.35 billion barrels of oil in 2009 at a cost of over half a million dollars per minute.
Yes, you read that correctly.
4.35 BILLION barrels imported in 2009.
Over $500,000 dollars spent per MINUTE on foreign oil.
That’s another $265 BILLION siphoned out of America’s struggling economy, and we still haven’t adopted a real energy plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. http://www.pickensplan.com/media/video/
480-652-2004