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Originally Posted by pornmonger
Who's to blame? No one. Consumers ultimately choose and cause this trade deficit. Consumers are the ones that choose to buy domestic or imported goods. It has nothing to do with Bush. It's a free market economy.
The only thing a government can do is levy tariffs on certain products and stop price dumping.
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Up to a point...
Although consumers can only choose among what is available and as you noted, Sony make better products than Zenith, etc. Walk into Wal-Mart and if you want a particular t-shirt or whatever, you either buy it or not, regardless of its source. Manufacturers and retailers are responsible, along with consumers, for increasing trade imbalances.
Politicians (although not exclusively) George Bush
are responsible for creating tax laws and all kinds of other incentives which exaggerate the advantage of manufacturing in low-wage countries and for not attempting to discourage moves abroad.
It's also somewhat facile to write it all off as free-market economics, because although that statement is essentially correct, the term means different things in different places. For example, Japan is extremely good at protecting itself against imports while allowing its companies to operate freely. Come to that, the long-term outlook that most Japanese investors have (as opposed to Wall St investors' demand for increased profits year-on-year) also makes their "free market" function quite differently from ours.