China and US reach 'consensus' on reducing trade gap

[EmperorScorpious]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/20/china-and-us-reach-consensus-on-reducing-trade-gap

One step forward. Hopefully Trump doesn't make us take a thousand steps back.

[coup]

The whole thing about 'trade surplus' is bizarre-o-world talk to anyone who knows how comparative advantage works. The US is already a primarily service-based economy too to boot.

A country buying goods from another country is hardly a bad thing; cheaper goods being imported is actually very important for an economy's development, and China knows this too which is why they've been grooming some African nations to import cheap goods to them as things get more expensive to make in China during their transition into a service economy too.

[Zenreon]

Comparative advantage only works if you can say that the efforts you would have spent on those items would be better spent elsewhere. When you introduce involuntary unemployment the model fails due to its assumptions not be valid.

[Sableye]

that's the whole point though, nobody who knows anything about trade believes the deficit means anything, but for laypeople it seems like we're just hemmoraging money to the chinese