In those critical items the Commerce Department defines as advanced technology products (ATP), our trade deficit with China in 2008 reached an astonishing $72 billion. Since Bush took office, our total trade deficit with China in ATP exceeds $300 billion.
Which of us, China or America, has the trade profile of a mature industrial and technological power?
Americans deplore our deepening dependence on foreign regimes for the vital necessity of oil. Are they unaware that the U.S. trade deficit in manufactured goods, $440 billion, is $89 billion greater than our all-time record trade deficit of $351 billion in crude oil?
Why is a dependence on Canada, Mexico, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia for oil a greater peril than a reliance on China and Asia for vital necessities upon which our prosperity and military depend?
A week ago, the Washington Times ("Volcker Blames Recession on Trade Imbalances") reported that ex-Fed Chair Paul Volcker told Congress the "massive trade-related imbalances in the United States economy were the source of the financial crisis."
Pressed by Sen. Chris Dodd, Volcker said, "Go back to the imbalances in the economy. The United States has been consuming more than it has been producing for many years."
What "imbalances" was Volcker referring to? Perhaps these.
Since 1982, the United States has run $5.7 trillion in trade deficits in manufactured goods, and $2.1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and automobiles. In the Bush years alone, the United States ran more than $1 trillion in trade deficits in auto parts, trucks and cars.
These statistics, these realities -- factories closing in the United States, manufacturing jobs being outsourced in the millions to China and Asia, enormous, endless trade deficits in goods -- testify to a painful truth: America is a receding and declining world power.
And in dealing with this systemic crisis, Obama's stimulus package is as irrelevant as were the Bush tax cuts.
How do we correct those "trade-related imbalances" of which Volcker spoke? We must export more and import less, save more and spend less, produce more and consume less. We need to emulate the ants and behave less like the grasshoppers of summer.
But how do you tell that to two generations of Americans who have been raised in an era of entitlement?
America needs an Industrial Policy.
But how do you tell that to Americans indoctrinated in the hoary myth that Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley caused the Great Depression and anything that sounds like America First risks a rerun of the 1930s?