Tackling Economic Issues on All Fronts

The recession and a weakening of the U.S. dollar last year had lasting effects on the U.S. trade deficit.
Tackling Economic Issues on All Fronts
Job seekers and employers come together at the Inland Empire Career Fair on February 25, 2010 in Ontario, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
3/12/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/yobz97057596.jpg" alt="Job seekers and employers come together at the Inland Empire Career Fair on February 25, 2010 in Ontario, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)" title="Job seekers and employers come together at the Inland Empire Career Fair on February 25, 2010 in Ontario, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1822139"/></a>
Job seekers and employers come together at the Inland Empire Career Fair on February 25, 2010 in Ontario, California. (David McNew/Getty Images)
The recession and a weakening of the U.S. dollar last year had lasting effects on the U.S. trade deficit. The 2009 U.S. trade deficit of $381 billion was almost 50 percent lower than the $696 billion in 2008, according to the latest U.S. foreign trade statistics.

Last year, Americans bought less computer accessories, toys, games, sporting goods, and telecommunications equipment from China, decreasing the U.S.-China deficit by 15.4 percent in 2009.

A drop-off in American spending habits also affected Europeans—the United States cut its U.S.-European deficit by 36.9 percent last year. Canada’s exports were even hit harder with a decrease of 74 percent. That decrease was mainly due to crude oil and natural gas products, which experienced a sharp drop in prices beginning in August 2008. In July 2008, crude oil prices had reached roughly $147 a barrel and are currently hovering around $80 per barrel.

Confronting Unemployment


The latest U.S. unemployment rate, released in the beginning of March, is still 9.7 percent—a figure that is relatively unchanged since January. Currently, the number of people going back to work and those being laid off are similar.

The construction sector—a seasonal job market—contributed to more people in the unemployment lines, while the temporary help services sector hired the majority of those going back to work.

The truth is that the most recent unemployment numbers no longer account for the long-term unemployed. Once one drops off the unemployment benefits list, one is no longer a statistic in the unemployment figures, though the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports 6.1 million of long-term unemployed people for February.

According to the BLS’s “Employment Outlook: 2008-2018,” released last December, those with a postsecondary education will land most of the jobs.

“More than half of the new jobs will be in professional and related occupations and service occupations. In addition, occupations where a postsecondary degree or award is usually required are expected to account for one-third of total job openings during the projection period,” according to the BLS’s study.

Seventeen out of thirty jobs predicted to have the highest growth between now and 2018 are those that require a postsecondary degree. Many of these jobs are in the health or technical sectors and include nursing positions, dental hygienists, veterinary technologists and technicians, physical and occupational therapist assistants, as well as environmental and engineering technicians.

The concern of many is job outsourcing to foreign countries where labor cost is often a fraction of the cost in the United States. Most of the future job openings are in the service industries that cannot be outsourced, such as auto repair technicians, dental assistants, electricians, plumbers, fitness professionals, pharmacy technicians, teacher aides, electricians, plumbers, doctors, and pharmacists.

“Some 70 percent of the U.S. economy is not vulnerable to offshoring because it is composed of services such as retail, restaurants and hotels, health care and other services that necessarily take place locally,” according to an article on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site.

Tackling America’s Trade Deficit

“The President’s Trade Policy Agenda for 2010 advances a robust American role in the global trading system by further outlining what trade can mean for American exports, jobs, and economic growth,” stated an announcement on the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) Web site

Addressing the trade deficit and at the same time unemployment, President Barack Obama promised to create 2 million jobs by 2015 in a recently published 2010 Trade Policy Agenda report.

To fight and counter unfair trade practices in the form of trade barriers, such as exchange rate manipulation and operating forced labor camps as practiced by the Chinese communist regime, the president outlined strategies that would be vigorously pursued through aggressive negotiations by the U.S. government.

The goal is to enforce existing trade agreements and existing rights, and at the same time, demand changes due to the volatility of today’s markets.

One of the first steps to be taken in 2010 is to breathe new life into the Doha Rounds, started in 2001 and meant to eliminate trade barriers, in the hope for an agreement in 2010.

We are “working toward an ambitious and balanced Doha agreement—not any agreement, but an agreement that will open up markets and increase exports around the world,” said President Obama in the report.

The United States will continue to avail itself of the WTO (World Trade Organization) mechanisms in dealing with unfair trade practices, which pit one nation’s economy against that of others and confront open markets, such as those in most Western economies versus controlled markets, including China, India, Republic of Korea, the European Union, and Brazil.

These countries have non-tariff and tariff barriers in place, including China’s “buy-local” directive, India’s requirements that Indian nationals hold majority ownership in business ventures, as well as keeping broad band wireless access services in the hands of Indian nationals. A troubling issue to be addressed is that China’s and India’s courts give preferential treatment to their homegrown companies and nationals, instead of assessing each complaint based on facts.