Do we exacerbate the trade imbalance with China every time we shop at WalMart?

Answer 1

Manufacturing of product has virtually effected every industry in the market place and it no longer matters where you shop.

Among other things, I distribute automotive parts (primarily air conditioning). Most of our things are coming in from Mexico and China. Just about everything has been outsourced and the choices are slim to none.

Answer 2

Of course (although exacerbate may not be the right word). China has a comparative advantage. Look at 90% of what you own and you can thank China. As a free
market, we will always buy from the cheapest seller. China's got the manpower, we've got the money.

Why would a business / corporation / individual spend more money for an item if they can get practically the same item elsewhere for less money?

A trade imbalance isn't necessarily a bad thing.

edit:
I'm curious as to whether the yahoo user Shamrocks below me has ever owned his own business or taken an economics class. Just like you pay the least amount of money you can for the highest quality product, hiring employees is the same scenario. By increasing the minimum wage, the gov't is controlling how much each worker is worth rather than the market. This same economic fact is the reason why unions destroyed the auto industry. Unions demand more money than what the worker is actually worth which eliminates profit and eventually destroys the company (and the union workers' jobs too).

Just take a look at a simple Supply and Demand curve. When gov't raises the minimum wage, this decreases a company's ability to produce as much of a product/service as they could before (therefore it will decrease Supply curve). In turn, this would also decrease Quantity Demand, due to the rise in equilibrium prices that the decrease in Supply caused.

So as you can hopefully see, by not raising the minimum wage, it keeps the employees "affordable" to the employer. However, as soon as the gov't gets involved to tell an employer how much an employee should be worth, they may not be able to afford all of the employees that they had before the minimum wage increase.

This is why we technically have a "mixed" economy and not a "free" market economy.

I forgot that "profit" was a dirty word to a Liberal.

Answer 3

No. Although we do have a trade imbalance with China, the media hypes the percentage imbalance by counting units instead of their dollar value. In reality, combined, China's goods have a higher dollar value than what we give them in return. China is exporting toys, food and other petty items while importing petroleum, heavy machinery, cars, etc from the U.S which are much more expensive and make up the majority of the trade imbalance.

Answer 4

Big time, along with the likes of Target, Kohl's, K-Mart,etc.. I had no problem finding an American manufacturer of jeans and other clothes,( because the crap I got made in China promptly fell apart ), when I looked, I will now be doing business with them, I am now going to look for other American product manufacturers in other fields to see what I can find and if and when I do find them they will also be getting my business. Also the American made clothes were the basically the same price as the garbage made in China. Also I've started growing vegetables in the backyard and already have lots of fresh tomatoes and cucumbers and squash and zucchini and next year I'm seeing what fruit I can plant, so China can keep their poisoned food too.

Answer 5

We have a trade imbalance because we live in a capitalist economy.

The nature of capitalism is to maximums profits by engaging in business transactions that have low cost and high returns.

Other countries are just better at playing the capitalist game than most US companies, because of the high degree of regulation on US companies. So, US companies -- being good capitalists -- buy where costs are low, and sell where profits are high.

If you don't like the model, with get rid of capitalism, or get rid of federal regulations on US companies that make it hard to compete. But don't blame those who uses the system the way it was intended to be used.

Answer 6

You know why Wal-Mart gets such a bad rap from liberals? Because Wal-Mart started selling groceries and didn't force their employees to join a union. Until the super Wal-Marts started opening up liberals couldn't care less about any of the chain stores.

By the way the head quarters for wake up walmart.com is in the same building as the union headquarters for grocery workers. But a true liberal can ignore this as just a meaningless coincidence.

Answer 7

Those implications are not far from true, since the GNP of the US is under those in China right now.......Simply saying its a balancing game is underrating the situation....Its more of a question about American spending and willingness to go into debt over it......

What is your credit balance, btw??

Answer 8

No.

The trade imbalance happened when those chinese goods were allowed into the USA.

Answer 9

Maybe, but it doesn't matter. I have a trade imbalance with Wal-Mart, as well.

BTW, our manufacturing is fine.

Answer 10

Let's see, I go to Home Depot,Fry's,Lowe's,Ace hardware.. I seem to see Lot's of Chinese symbols on merchandise boxes stacked on the floor!!