America’s Best Trade Partners

What’s it take to make the list of America’s 20 best trade partners? “Man-for-man,” (in other words, on a “per capita” basis) buy more from America than you sell to it. That’s it.

In my previous posts, we looked at our biggest trade deficits and biggest trade surpluses in 2020 and found that the population density of our trading partner was, by far, the biggest factor in determining whether our balance of trade would be a surplus or a deficit. On the surplus side, whether or not a country was a net oil exporter was also a factor, since all oil throughout the world is priced in U.S. dollars.

In my last post on the subject, we found that our biggest trade surpluses were with either sparsely populated countries or net oil exporters. But the list included both very large and very tiny countries. So let’s factor size out of the equation and see if population density is still a factor. Let’s look at the list of our biggest per capita trade surpluses in 2020. Here’s the list: America’s best trade partners in 2020.

The population density effect isn’t as clear on this list until you look at the population density of this group of nations as a whole – 22.5 people per square mile. Compare that to the density of the group of nations on the list of our twenty worst trade deficits – 360 people per square mile. Of the twenty nations on this list, thirteen are tiny nations, most of which are oil exporters. Two nations dominate this list – Canada and Australia – huge nations, comparable in size to the United States, with population densities of eleven and nine people per square mile respectively (compared to 93 people per square mile in the U.S.). Together, they account for 31% of our total trade surplus with the nations on this list.

This is a sad list. First of all, it doesn’t take much to make this list. If I were a country and I bought one recliner chair from the U.S., I’d be right at the top of the list. Secondly, our trade surpluses with the nations on this list has fallen by almost 9% over the past ten years. With the two dominant nations on the list – Canada and Australia – our surplus has declined by 33% and 34% respectively. Compare that to the 147% increase in our deficit with the nations on the list of our top 20 worst deficits. Also, consider that Djibouti made it onto this list of our top twenty surpluses solely on the basis of U.S. foreign aid to Djibouti. They didn’t even buy stuff from us. We gave it to them.

The fact is that American manufacturing is dying. 2020 marked the 45th consecutive year of ever-increasing trade deficits. We make less and less with each passing year, are forced to buy more from foreign countries, selling them less, and we export our high-paying jobs to them, all because we’re too stupid to factor the role of population density into our trade policy and apply tariffs to the most densely populated. In his first 100 days in office, President Biden, while proclaiming his desire to help American manufacturing, hasn’t levied a single tariff. He hasn’t lifted a finger to do anything meaningful to help American manufacturing workers.

So now we’ve looked at the two extremes of the trade spectrum – our twenty worst trade deficits and our twenty best trade surpluses. But that’s only 40 nations out of the more than 200 hundred around the world. Will the population density factor still be evident in 2020 when we look at trade with the entire world? We’ll see in one of my next posts.

America’s Top 20 Customers of Made-in-the-USA Products

In a previous post we looked at a list of America’s 20 worst per capita trade deficits in manufactured products.  Today we look at the other end of the spectrum – our top 20 trade surpluses in manufactured products.  In per capita terms, these are the people of the world (other than Americans themselves) who are America’s best customers for American made products.  You may be surprised.  Here’s the list:

 Top 20 Surpluses, 2010

The nations that you see high-lighted in yellow are net exporters of oil.  More about that in a minute.  First, though, it’s important to note that, unlike the list of our worst per capita trade deficits, which was dominated by densely populated countries (only 3 were less densely populated than the U.S.), this list is dominated by sparsely populated countries. 

But there are some notable exceptions, beginning with the top 2 countries – Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE).  In general, sparsely populated nations are rich in natural resources and maintain balances of trade by trading those resources for manufactured goods, including American products.  But Qatar and UAE are rare exceptions.  They are very tiny, densely populated nations who just happen to be literally afloat on a sea of oil.  Thus, in spite of their dense populations, they still have large surpluses in those resources that they can trade for manufactured goods, just like the more sparsely populated larger nations, rich in resources, like Canada and Australia.  Kuwait and Brunei are two more examples who appear on the list – tiny, densely-populated nations afloat on a sea of oil, just like Qatar and UAE. 

That leaves four other nations on the list who are more densely populated than the U.S. – Belgium, Panama, The Netherlands and Lebanon.  Panama is easy to explain.  They are only slightly more populated than the U.S. and derive the lion’s share of their wealth, which they’re then able to trade for American manufactured goods, from an unusual source – operation of the Panama canal. 

That leaves only Belgium, The Netherlands and Lebanon – very tiny nations and the three most densely populated nations on the list, by far – as the only remaining anomalies.  The first two are among the wealthiest nations on earth.  And even Lebanon ranks close to the top third of nations in terms of purchasing power.  How do these nations defy the population density bugaboo that makes virtually every other densely populated nation on earth dependent on manufacturing for export?   

First of all, it’s important to note that these three are very tiny nations who, combined, are smaller than the state of Indiana.  Together they make up only 0.07% of the earth’s land mass while the remaining 17 nations on the list account for over 18%.  Nations so small as these tend to have unusual economies that are heavily skewed toward services, especially financial services, and they then trade those services for manufactured goods.  It’s the very reason that I rolled the data for tiny city states like Singapore, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, San Marino and others into the data for the larger, surrounding countries. 

Regarding Lebanon’s economy, the CIA World Fact Book has this to say:

The Lebanese economy is service-oriented; main growth sectors include banking and tourism.

Tourism?  Really?  While few Americans aside from those with family ties would choose to travel to Lebanon, it seems that their Mediterranean beaches are a big draw for people in that part of the world.  And this is actually the reason that I excluded tiny island nations from my study of population density and per capita consumption.  All have very unique economies dependent on tourism, and they trade tourist dollars for American-made products.  It’s also the same reason that Belize appears on this top 20 list.  While not an island, it too is a small country heavily dependent on tourism. 

In the final analysis, aside from the anomalies of these three tiny, densely populated countries and a few tiny major oil exporters, low population densities dominate the list of nations with whom the U.S. has surpluses in manufactured goods.  The combined population density of the 20 nations on this list is only 20 people per square mile.  Compare that to the list of our top 20 trade deficits, where the combined population density was 343 people per square mile.  The contrast is so stark it bears repeating:  20 people per square mile vs. 343 people per square mile (four times the population density of the U.S.).

If the president wanted to make real progress on restoring a balance of trade, he’d drop his goal of doubling exports and instead focus on boosting free trade with sparsely populated nations while implementing tariffs on imports from densely populated nations. 

Now that we’ve looked at both ends of the trade spectrum, we’ll next consider the entire trade picture for 2010.  Stay tuned.

Weaker Dollar No Solution to Joblessness

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40214520

As I was postig the results of my study of currency exchange rates and trade imbalances – a study which showed that changes in currency exchange rate have no effect on trade – the above-linked article titled “Weaker Dollar Seen as Unlikely to Cure Joblessness” appeared on CNBC. 

The article begins by re-stating the now disproven economic theory:

A weakening currency traditionally helps a country raise its exports and create more jobs for its workers.

The article then goes on to make the case that a falling dollar won’t have this predicted effect.  I can add one more reason – the theory is flawed and not supported by the data.  A weaker dollar will have no effect on the prices of imports, as exporting nations will simply cut costs and subsidize their industries to hold the line on price, assuring that they maintain their share of the U.S. market.

Rising prices for imports certainly would bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.  But there’s only one way to make sure they rise sufficiently, and that’s for the U.S. to set the prices.  In other words, the U.S. needs to apply tariffs.  Tariffs must be applied to manufactured products, and the size of the tariffs must be proportional to the population density of the country of origin.  This would result in big tariffs on all products from China, even bigger tariffs on products from Germany, Japan and South Korea, but would leave products from nations like Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and a host of others completely free of tariffs. 

The only problem we’d have then would be building factories fast enough to keep pace with demand.