Obama makes reducing trade deficit a “second” priority
Those of us that heard Obama’s recent State of the Union address would understand what I am talking about. I love Obama, no doubt about that. I love his positive attitude and confidence. Everyone, even the Republicans agree that he is taking drastic measures and I believe a lot of those are what America needs. The free-spending attitude is a bit of a concern. Investing into education makes sense, but only with very specific targeted goals. Just general investment into a lot of generic sectors with the hope of job creation actually sounds like what Bush did all these years. But overall, the focus on getting out of Iraq, universal health care and tax-moderation, seems fair to me in this time of crisis.
However, here’s what I don’t like so much. Obama does not want to tackle the huge trade deficit (which is over 50 trillion overall now) head on right now. He wants to focus on stabilizing the economy first by spending internally and somehow, magically, reduce the deficit during his tenure by half. Politicians and executives often make such claims which can be hidden behind politican jargon. So, what portion of the deficit is Obama planning to reduce. Bank debt, non-bank Corporate debt, medicare/Social Security debt or the huge 10 trillion dollar National Governmental debt? if it’s only the national debt, that’s not going to be enough. His policies need to ensure that the overall trade deficit is cut down. And it’s almost impossible to do that unless there is a plan to somehow help corporations SELL/EXPORT American goods and services. There is opportunity out there. This might sound silly, but a lot of countries need English speaking trainers and I don’t see any company trying to use American people to create English training programs abroad. That’s not going to get rid of the trillions of dollars in deficit, but overall, an encouragement to “export” instead of just buy would have really helped. Obama does not seem to see it that way. Or perhaps he does and just did not talk about it in his address.
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