The State of America

[Dayuhan]

America doesn't work like our idealized notion of how America works. Did it ever?

A pipe system water flow regulator-producing company somewhere deep in a German rural area is more adapted to the world market than all U.S. companies that you and I would recognise.

Maybe you wouldn't recognize Caterpillar or Boeing, to name a couple, but most of us would.

Many Americans would be surprised, but the US actually runs a trade surplus in capital goods.

US manufacturing certainly has its issues, but it's not a basket case; there are strengths to build on and numerous competitive areas. The single greatest distorting factor, the outrageously overvalued currency that prevailed for the better part of a half century, has already been largely corrected, though it will take a decade or more to correct the accumulated impact of that extended distortion.

Of course it will be very difficult for the US to ever move to a trade surplus until the vast expenditures for energy imports are addressed, but that's another story...