Trade Lies. How Ross and Trump use free trade myths to put us in a deeper hole.
Wilbur Ross, our new Secretary of Commerce, is similar to the President in his ability to flat-out lie. He recently wrote that the US has the lowest trade barriers in the world. We don't. You can refer to the World Bank for that data....I am sure he knows about the World Bank. At least I hope so. Canada, Israel, the European Union, Japan, Indonesia, Belarus, Malaysia, Paraguay, and more all have higher tarrif rates than the U.S. Also, if you split it down to economies, instead of countries, Hong Kong and Singapore are the two most open economies in the world. These two large provinces in China support a huge amount of U.S. economy as a result. Politicians play upon free trade myths to the detriment of our country and to our economy. Ross is correct that we havethe largest trade deficit in the world — $500bn annually. However he does not address what this really means. We have a large economy. A large trade deficit will occur in a large economy, folks. The fact is that trade d...