Time for a Reality Check on the Trade Deficit
The U.S. trade deficit rose in January, according to this morning’s monthly trade report from the U.S. Commerce Department, and on cue the news is being greeted as a bad omen for the U.S. economy.
Reflecting the conventional wisdom, this morning’s Associated Press story states as a matter of fact, with no attribution:
A widening trade deficit hurts the U.S. economy. When imports outpace exports, more jobs go to foreign workers than to U.S. workers.
Oh really? As I’ve documented elsewhere, the U.S. economy actually grows faster during periods when the trade deficit is widening compared to when it is shrinking. That’s because an expanding economy increases demand for imports as well as domestically made goods. Stronger growth also attracts more foreign investment, which is the flip side of the trade deficit.
The same story is true for jobs. In Chapter 5 of my 2009 Cato book, Mad about Trade, I show how the unemployment rate invariably rises during periods when the trade deficit is “improving,” and declines during periods when the deficit is “worsening.” (Check out Table 2.2 on p. 81, courtesy of Google Books.)
Just think back to the 1990s. From 1992 to 2000, the trade deficit widened from 0.5 percent of GDP to 3.9 percent. During that same period, the unemployment rate fell from 7.3 percent to 3.9 percent and the economy added more than 18 million jobs.
More recently, the trade deficit narrowed sharply between 2007 and 2009 as a share of GDP, while the economy lost more than 8 million jobs and unemployment soared.
The conventional wisdom on trade deficits and the economy is due for a reality check. If politicians believe that “a widening trade deficit hurts the economy,” contrary to all the evidence, they will be more tempted to reach for the snake oil of protectionism.
Can a Tariff Wall Restore America’s Industrial Glory?
Did America become a great industrial power in the 19th century because of its high trade barriers? This is not just an academic question. Modern-day critics of trade, such as Pat Buchanan and Ian Fletcher, argue that the same tariff wall that made American great more than a century ago can bring back those days of industrial glory.
I did my best to debunk this flawed historical argument in Chapter 7 of Mad about Trade, but I’m delighted to see my free-trade buddy Don Boudreaux of George Mason University weigh in with an article in the new issue of The Freeman.
Under the title, “Tariffs and Freedom,” Don neatly dispels a number of myths surrounding that period in American economic history.
Are U.S. Multinationals to Blame for High Unemployment?
Many Americans believe the unemployment rate remains stubbornly high because U.S. multinational companies have been outsourcing and offshoring jobs to low-wage countries at the expense of jobs at home. And they believe this in part because politicians and the media tell them it’s so, even though it isn’t.
Consider this story today from the Associated Press under the provocative headline, “Where are the jobs? For many companies, overseas.”
Corporate profits are up. Stock prices are up. So why isn’t anyone hiring?
Actually, many American companies are–just maybe not in your town. They’re hiring overseas, where sales are surging and the pipeline of orders is fat.
More than half of the 15,000 people that Caterpillar Inc. has hired this year were outside the U.S. UPS is also hiring at a faster clip overseas. For both companies, sales in international markets are growing at least twice as fast as domestically.
The trend helps explain why unemployment remains high in the United States, edging up to 9.8 percent last month, even though companies are performing well: All but 4 percent of the top 500 U.S. corporations reported profits this year, and the stock market is close to its highest point since the 2008 financial meltdown.
But the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S. The additional 1.4 million jobs would have lowered the U.S. unemployment rate to 8.9 percent, says Robert Scott, the institute’s senior international economist.
Where to start? First, look back at the reference to Caterpillar, the quintessential U.S. multinational company. If more than half of the employees the company has hired this year are outside the United States, doesn’t that imply that the company also hired workers within the United States, perhaps several thousand?
In fact, as I noted on p. 101 of my Cato book Mad about Trade, Caterpillar and other U.S. multinationals tend to hire workers at home when they are hiring workers abroad. When global business is good, employment tends to ramp up throughout a multinational company’s operations, whether in the United States or abroad. (Earlier this month the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News ran a story about Caterpillar hiring 600 new workers at a local distribution center.)
It is simply false to argue that, if U.S. multinationals did not add jobs to their operations abroad, those jobs would be created at home. The opposite is much closer to the truth. Over the past 30 years, the change in employment of U.S. multinationals in their U.S. parent operations and in their affiliates abroad has been positively and strongly correlated. When hiring grows abroad, it grows at home, and when it lags at home, it lags abroad.
And when U.S. companies do hire abroad, their aim is not typically to cut wage costs but to reach new customers (as I explained in an earlier op-ed). That’s why U.S. multinationals employ far more workers in high-wage Europe than in low-wage countries such as India and China. In fact, according to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Commerce Department, U.S. multinationals employed five times as many workers in Europe (4.82 million) in 2008 than they did in China (950,000).
If U.S. companies are forced to reduce their operations abroad in the name of fighting unemployment at home, they will be less able to compete in global markets and less able to expand production and employment in their domestic operations.
The Bogus Charge of ‘Shipping Jobs Overseas’
In the final push before Election Day, President Obama has been traveling the country criticizing Republicans for favoring tax breaks for U.S. companies that supposedly ship U.S. jobs overseas. It’s a bogus charge that I dismantle in an op-ed in this morning’s New York Post:
The charge sounds logical: Under the US corporate tax code, US-based companies aren’t taxed on profits that their affiliates abroad earn until those profits are returned here. Supposedly, this “tax break” gives firms an incentive to create jobs overseas rather than at home, so any candidate who doesn’t want to impose higher taxes on those foreign operations is guilty of “shipping jobs overseas.”
In fact, American companies have quite valid reasons beyond any tax advantage to establish overseas affiliates: That’s how they reach foreign customers with US-branded goods and services.
Those affiliates allow US companies to sell services that can only be delivered where the customer lives (such as fast food and retail) or to customize their products, such as automobiles, to better reflect the taste of customers in foreign markets.
I go on to point out that close to 90 percent of what U.S.-owned affiliates produce abroad is sold abroad; that those foreign affiliates are now the primary way U.S. companies reach global consumers with U.S.-branded goods and services; and that the more jobs they create in their affiliates abroad, the more they create in their parent operations in the United States. If Congress raises taxes on those foreign operations, it will only force U.S. companies to cede market share to their German and Japanese (and French and Korean) competitors.
I unpack the issue at greater length in a Free Trade Bulletin published last year, and on pages 99-104 of my recent Cato book, Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.
More Nonsense about the Trade Deficit
It has become conventional wisdom that a rising trade deficit is bad news for the economy. This week’s announcement of an expanding deficit in June prompted such headlines today as this one in the news pages of the Wall Street Journal: “Wider Trade Gap Signals Weak Growth.” As my colleague David Boaz blogged earlier today, the trade deficit is even blamed for daily swings in the stock market.
I’ve been studying and writing about the trade deficit for years, and devoted a whole chapter of my 2009 Cato book Mad about Trade to the subject, and I keep coming back to a basic question: If the trade deficit signals weak growth, why does the U.S. economy seem to perform so much better during periods when the trade deficit is growing, and so much worse when the trade deficit is shrinking?
Think back to the 1990s, the “goldilocks economy” when growth was strong, jobs plentiful, and inflation low. That was also a time of rising trade deficits. In fact, the trade gap grew for eight years in a row, rising from $77 billion in 1991 to $455 billion in 2000. In that same period, the unemployment rate dropped from 7.3 to 3.9 percent.
Again, in the middle of the George W. Bush presidency, the trade gap grew for five straight years, during a period when the economy expanded and the unemployment rate fell from 5.7 to 4.4 percent.
In contrast, the trade deficit invariably shrinks during periods of recession. The trade deficit fell by more than half from 2007 to 2009 as domestic demand and imports plunged and unemployment soared. Sagging domestic demand means fewer imports.
Of course, I’m not arguing that a bigger trade deficit stimulates the economy. I am arguing, contrary to the conventional wisdom reflected in this morning’s headlines, that an expanding trade deficit does not appear to be a drag on growth. In fact, the plain evidence is that an expanding trade deficit is more often than not a signal of stronger growth.
A Clash of Worldviews on Free Trade
If you want to witness the clash of two worldviews on trade, check out the online debate I’m having with Ian Fletcher of the U.S. Business and Industry Council. A self-described protectionist, Fletcher has written a new book with the unambiguous title, Free Trade Doesn’t Work: What Should Replace it and Why. In the opposite corner, I argue for eliminating barriers to trade, drawing on my own recent book, Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.
The debate is being hosted by the International Economic Law and Policy Blog. We’ve already filed two 600-word posts each, with a third to come at the end of this week and concluding arguments early next week.
Global Markets Keep U.S. Economy Afloat
Three items in the news this week remind us why we should be glad we live in a more global economy. While American consumers remain cautious, American companies and workers are finding increasing opportunities in markets abroad:
- Sales of General Motors vehicles continue to slump in the United States, but they are surging in China. The company announced this week that sales in China of GM-branded cars and trucks were up 67 percent in 2009, to 1.8 million vehicles. If current trends continue, within a year or two GM will be selling more vehicles in China than in the United States.
- James Cameron’s 3-D movie spectacular “Avatar” just surpassed $1 billion in global box-office sales. Two-thirds of its revenue has come from abroad, with France, Germany, and Russia the leading markets. This has been a growing pattern for U.S. films. Hollywood—which loves to skewer business and capitalism—is thriving in a global market.
- Since 2003, the middle class in Brazil has grown by 32 million. As the Washington Post reports, “Once hobbled with high inflation and perennially susceptible to worldwide crises, Brazil now has a vibrant consumer market …” Brazil’s overall economy is bigger than either India or Russia, and its per-capita GDP is nearly double that of China.
As I note in my Cato book Mad about Trade, American companies and workers will find their best opportunities in the future by selling to the emerging global middle class in Brazil, China, India and elsewhere. Without access to more robust markets abroad, the Great Recession of 2008-09 would have been more like the Great Depression.
Libertarian Policy Blogs
Looking for more commentary and analysis from Cato scholars? You can find their own blogs here:
Daniel Griswold – Mad About Trade
Jim Harper – Washington Watch & Tech Liberation
Daniel J. Mitchell – International Liberty
Will Wilkinson – WillWilkinson.net
Jeffrey Miron – Libertarianism, from A to Z
Patrick Michaels – World Climate Report
Randal O’Toole – The Antiplanner
David Boaz – DavidBoaz.com
Malou Innocent – Huffington Post
Julian Sanchez – JulianSanchez.com
Gene Healy – GeneHealy.com
Tom Palmer – TomGPalmer.com
Good Night, Lou Dobbs
In his CNN swan song last night, Lou Dobbs told his loyal if shrinking audience that important national issues
are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion. I will be working diligently to change that as best I can.
I would argue that his very act of resigning from his prime-time perch is probably the best contribution he’s made yet to advancing “rigorous empirical thought.”
Since he launched his program “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in 2003, the CNN anchor has been engaged in one long rant against immigration, free trade, and other populist bugaboos. His approach was anything but rigorous and empirical.
In a review of his 2004 book, Exporting America, I critiqued his flabby reasoning and questionable facts. (My new Cato book, Mad about Trade, is a painless, one-shot antidote to everything Dobbs has said about free trade, manufacturing, and the middle class.) The New York Times, “60 Minutes” and other mainstream news outlets have exposed such outrageous whoppers from Dobbs as his claim that immigrants have caused an explosion of leprosy cases and crime.
Dobbs was vague about his plans for the future last night, but there is some speculation that he will run for office, perhaps for president in 2012. I hope he does. It would be an interesting test of just how popular his sentiments really are among Main Street Americans.
Imports Wrongly Blamed for Unemployment
Import competition can throw Americans out of work. Even advocates of free trade like me will readily acknowledge that fact. And nobody needs to remind the people of Hickory, North Carolina.
On the front page of the Washington Post this morning, under the headline, “In N.C., damage not easily mended: Globalization drives unemployment to 15% in one corner of state,” the paper reports in detail how the people of that community are struggling to adjust to a more open U.S. economy:
The region has lost more of its jobs to international competition than just about anywhere else in the nation, according to federal trade-assistance statistics, as textile mills have closed, furniture factories have dwindled and even the fiber-optic plants have undergone mass layoffs. The unemployment rate is one of the highest in the nation–about 15 percent.
Nobody wants to lose their job involuntarily, but a story like this needs to be read in perspective. As I document in my new Cato book Mad about Trade, the large majority of Americans who lose their jobs each year are not displaced by trade. Technology is the great job disruptor, but Americans also lose their jobs because of domestic competition, changing consumer tastes, and recessions.
For every person who loses their job because of globalization, I estimate there are 30 who have lost their jobs for other reasons. I’m waiting for a front-page story on all the newspaper workers who have lost their jobs because of the Internet, or the 30,000 workers laid off by Kodak in the past 5 years because of the spread of digital cameras and plunging film sales, or the book stores and record stores that have shut down and laid off workers because of Amazon.com and iTunes.
Trade is not a cause of higher unemployment nationwide, either, as the Post story seems to imply. Imports have fallen sharply during the latest recession along with the trade deficit. In contrast, imports were rising at double-digit rates when the unemployment rate was below 5 percent. Like technology, trade can put people out of work, but it also creates new and generally better paying opportunities for employment, while raising our overall standard of living.
A Globalized Reading List
If you are looking for a good book on globalization and trade, an excellent source of ideas is the book review section of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. The site features excerpts and reviews of the latest books covering all aspects of the subject.
I have an understandable soft spot for the latest posting, on my new Cato book titled Mad about Trade: Why Main Street America Should Embrace Globalization.
Congress to Lift the Travel Ban to Cuba?
Bloomberg News reports today that the U.S. House may pass a bill by the end of the year lifting the almost five-decade-old ban on travel to Cuba by American citizens. The step is long overdue. According to the article:
A group of House and Senate lawmakers proposed in March ending restrictions to allow all U.S. citizens and residents to travel to Cuba. [Rep. Sam Farr, a California Democrat] said the legislation, known as the “Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act,” also has enough votes to clear the Senate, where Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, and Republican Senator Michael Enzi of Wyoming introduced the legislation.
As Rep. Farr succinctly added, “If you are a potato, you can get to Cuba very easily, but if you are a person, you can’t, and that is our problem.”
I rebut a lot of what Sen. Dorgan has said about free trade and globalization in my new book, Mad about Trade, but on the issue of the Cuban embargo and travel ban, Sen. Dorgan and most of his fellow Democrats are pushing in the right direction, while most Republicans still vote to maintain our failed policies. For more on why the travel ban and embargo should be lifted, read my speech at Rice University in 2005.
Here is one issue where those of use who support less government and more economic freedom really can hope for progressive change.
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