in the last year I've stopped buying any product from american companies if there is another viable supplier, even if it costs more
heinz, coca-cola, five guys, goodyear (I needed new tyres), aws/gcp, lays, mars, ... all removed entirely
Supporting local businesses and moving away from globalization, which you also seem to support, is a good move for everyone.
Generally the framework is:
Buy local/shop at neighborhood businesses preferably selling American-made products or at least western products. When traveling we try to do the same in the country we are located in, but obviously not perfect about it.
Buy American generally, including online retailers. The smaller and more local the producer the better. Try and identify American companies that are trying to source from good/ethical suppliers like Patagonia, and avoiding Chinese-owned ones (Arteryx RIP).
Buy western - so that's your silk ties from Italy (something like E.& G. Cappelli), maybe French wine, you get the picture. My tires are Michelin and they are fantastic. I understand that the people on the Internet from Europe are really mad at the US (most folks generally don't care at all) but I'm not holding that against them. Same for Canada of course.
Reluctantly purchase computers/phones and such made in China simply because there's no alternative.
Awful products (Five Guys, Lays chips, &c.) are generally avoided even if they're American. Same applies globally. There's no hard and fast rule here for me, but those are some of the general considerations. OP if you like Five Guys style you should try making at home. A great burger isn't too hard to pull off for MUCH cheaper!
The article seems reactionary. Imports increasing, for example, maybe be due to temporary (or even permanent!) purchases from ex-US suppliers for things like increasing manufacturing capacity here in America. Obviously the effects and reconfiguration of the global economy isn't going to happen overnight.
Mainstream economists have broadly always said that the trade deficit is a good thing for the United States (I can't tell you the number of NPR and Planet Money podcasts with experts I've listened to that have said as much, and also thank you, OP) because it means we're consuming more and receiving more investment and we're trading worthless dollars for the consumption of goods. If you also aligned with the mainstream economics view that tariffs are bad, you'd likely look at an increasing trade deficit with tariffs in place as a very good outcome at least in some respects.
yes, this is the traditional position
but the underlying assumption is that USD remains the world reserve currency
and there's now an entire western hemisphere no longer interested in maintaining that
Well the USD is one of the world's reserve currencies, not the only one, though of course it's the dominant one. A reserve currency is just a currency that central banks or other significant financial institutions hold "in reserve" for liquidity purposes and so on. Even if the USD was no longer the dominant one, which isn't necessarily great, it hasn't seemed to have been that big of a problem for the EU.
I also don't think there's an entire western hemisphere that is no longer interested in maintain "that". Despite online noise, and a few symbolic selling of treasuries, nothing has really changed. You have to remember that politicians, including EU politicians talk a different game to the public than they do when they're sitting in rooms together at Davos or wherever. There are other considerations. How good for the EU will it be if the US collapses into financial ruin (it won't)? Who is going to backstop their militaries against Russia or other bad actors? The EU can say well we're going to go sell all these treasuries, well they become worth less and less and collapse the global economy. All you hear about on the Internet is the US's dirty laundry. It's the same thing with China and their military and economy. Most people can't speak about their failures because they're not aware, we only talk about the United States (and EU and others of course) and those failures and we don't speak in terms of incentives and actions and reactions.
"China has hypersonic missiles the US Navy is doomed!" is often parroted - yet who can speak intelligently to what the United States has done to negate or address that concern? Very few. Why is that? Well we're all reading the same articles about China's capabilities - it's propaganda.
I also don't see the USD going anywhere, anytime soon since the US military enforces the petrodollar system. But sure let's talk about some Swedish pension fund selling $50bn (7% of Elon Musk's net worth - screw that guy) worth of treasuries and call that the death of the United States economy.
Please don't take this as a defense of objectively bone-headed things the United States is doing either, I'm just pointing out that it's much more complicated than what your comment seems to suggest.
This would be a bigger concern if the US hasn't, in words, direct action, and inaction shown that it is no longer interested in doing that in any case and is, instead, both joining Russia as a threat to Europe.
this isn't the aim
the aim is to decouple enough so you can't be blackmailed
which unfortunately is quite a herculean task, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere
> The EU can say well we're going to go sell all these treasuries, well they become worth less and less and collapse the global economy.
they won't sell them simultaneously, because that would be crazy
but they will change their portfolio allocations over time in response to these new risks made obvious from the hourly yelling out of the white house
which increases US funding costs, decreasing its competitiveness, which is a vicious circle
if it goes on long enough, other trading partners won't want to be paid in dollars at all
Instead the EU is engaging in increasingly protectionist activity to build more domestic industry. I don't have a problem with that, but I'm also more on the protectionist side given the current state of global affairs and the need for the US to decouple from China - or is it only the EU that gets to decouple from a major trading partner and the US isn't allowed? At least that's what is parroted on the Internet. :)
* Just a quick note, there's a lot of uproar on the Internet over Greenland. Deservedly. But if the EU "decouples" from the US, there's no incentive for the US to not, for example, take over Greenland. These are the kinds of push-pull engagements that are continually failed to take into account by most commentaries and in most discussions. Again it's centered around what the EU will do, or what China will do, and so forth and the analysis never makes it past this, despite the most important activities happening downstream from initial activities.
* I'm an Ukraine hawk - US should have went straight to war with Russia over the invasion - being overly simplistic here but just to illustrate my hawkish-ness. But the EU is sitting here telling us it's this huge problem that Russia is invading Ukraine, yet they're happy to increase cooperation and trading with China who is providing support to Russia for their invasion? Of course, these things are all part of a negotiating mix. Maybe increasing trade will help China stop helping Russia's war against Ukraine, but if we wanted to stop analysis at the very first thing we see as everyone seems to want to do with respect to the EU or China, we could just look at that activity and say, well, maybe we shouldn't help the EU here and if they really think Ukraine is a problem they should take these other actions instead, whatever they may be.
yes, this is why it was created, it's why it exists!
I have absolutely no problem with the US deciding to re-balance its economy using tariffs, that is its sovereign right
but I have a problem with it using them as a tool of coercion against its "allies" to achieve foreign policy objectives
and not to mention the direct threats of annexation
> But if the EU "decouples" from the US, there's no incentive for the US to not, for example, take over Greenland.
if you assume the decoupling has completed, then the rest of the west would by definition be capable of defending itself without being subject to coercion/blackmail
(there's also the the two nuclear powers treaty bound to defend it)
You're saying "I had sex with my best friend's wife and now he doesn't want to see me anymore. This is stupid: if he doesn't want to be my friend, then there is no incentive for me to not have sex with his wife. He should still be my friend".
If you go like this in real life, I wonder how many friends you have :-).
But if you want to stick with it, in this scenario the situation would be you aren't friends, and don't intend to be because you both made each other really mad, and by having sex with the wife she gives you a lot of good stuff that you want and you're not really concerned with your former friend's feelings.
You think that the Europeans bought defense systems that depend on the US without thinking they were allies?
I dunno, I think Denmark and its remaining allies, including at least two nuclear weapons states, might be able to provide some incentive for the US not to take over Greenland.
> But the EU is sitting here telling us it's this huge problem that Russia is invading Ukraine, yet they're happy to increase cooperation and trading with China who is providing support to Russia for their invasion?
No, they aren't happy being backed into that by the open threat of US aggression. They weren't too happy having to ally with the USSR against the Nazis, either, but, you sometimes you have to deal with the overwhelming immediate problem, first.
> Maybe increasing trade will help China stop helping Russia's war against Ukraine
Its not Russia’s aggression in Ukraine that the shift toward China is aimed at.
> we could just look at that activity and say, well, maybe we shouldn't help the EU here and if they really think Ukraine is a problem they should take these other actions instead, whatever they may be.
We aren't helping the EU, we are threatening an EU and NATO state (and another NATO state, and consequently an ally of many EU states) with invasion. That’s literally the source of the shift you are complaining about. Trying to use the response to justify the action it responds to is...mind-boggling mental gymnastics.
If there really was just a, damn the alliance we want Greenland approach - and there's not, the EU including its nuclear armed states would not be able to do a single thing about it. Let's not be delusional. There is absolutely no debating this.
> No, they aren't happy being backed into that by the open threat of US aggression. They weren't too happy having to ally with the USSR against the Nazis, either, but, you sometimes you have to deal with the overwhelming immediate problem, first.
To be clear, are you suggesting the United States in general is the "immediate problem" and not Russia's invasion of Ukraine? I just want to make sure I understand your point of view here very clearly before I respond and want to give you that opportunity.
> Its not Russia’s aggression in Ukraine that the shift toward China is aimed at.
Ok, but as long as you acknowledge that China is assisting Russia in the invasion of Ukraine and further trading with China only furthers that war and Russia's aims.
> We aren't helping the EU, we are threatening an EU and NATO state (and another NATO state, and consequently an ally of many EU states) with invasion. That’s literally the source of the shift you are complaining about. Trying to use the response to justify the action it responds to is...mind-boggling mental gymnastics.
The source of the shift didn't start there, nor will it really end there. But we are helping the EU immensely even when we're having a conflict about somewhere else. You can't make the claim that the EU gets to do this with respect to China but the US doesn't get to do it with the EU.
No, I am suggesting that the United States, not China, poses the more immediate, direct threat to EU states and their treaty allies. Both the China and, under Trump, the US are also contributing to the problem of the Russian war in Ukraine, but that's not the comparison point.
> the US are also contributing to the problem of the Russian war in Ukraine
This is factually incorrect.
Although these food products are often regionalized.
I hadn't realised quite how many "UK" brands were owned by US conglomerates
a scarily high percentage
maybe a quarter?
the rest will be a "licensing fee", which goes straight to Atlanta, Georgia
(well, now it doesn't)
However, you're not paying 3x. I assume you're not really paying anything notably higher than x, right? So the encouragement is nearly zero.
So now you're tied up to Trump even more than before. Because you either traded your goods for US investments, or just pieces of paper that only continue to be worth something insofar as the US doesn't bungle their economic and geopolitical policies. Because those are the primary alternatives to settling the trade by getting goods/services back.
Why wouldn't you want to cash out and actually get stuff back from the US for the stuff you make for them, if you think the US is headed south? It's not like you're exporting to the US as a charity.
to hell with the economic consequences
as a brit, I wouldn't be buying German products in 1939 either
And then you seem surprised that those reactions are not always rational? How does that work?
Obviously all the countries not choosing to settle it by balancing the imports with equally valued exports are still not just donating that difference away, so it must be going somewhere.
What did you think that must be? The only option is they must have kept that capital in the US if they didn't export the balance of their trade back out. Kept it in the US because for whatever reason they decided to invest it there rather than get goods/services in immediate exchange or invest in their own country. By increasing the trade deficit you're literally going stronger in on investing in what America is doing.
Yes, countries do not export goods as charity to the US. They get to hodl the Dollar. This huge demand for the Dollar has made it possible to print so many of them and still keep the value, giving the US a big advantage over any other currency.
But who is responsible for the trade deficit anyway? It's the US consumer, of course. No one is forcing them to buy all this stuff.
Now imagine yourself in the shoes of a poor country exporting textiles to the US. What are you to do to make the US administration happy? You can't afford American products, so your only choice is to stop selling to the US? How does that make any sense or help anyone?
(Markets are not happy right now either, but that's likely for some other reason, and will no doubt rebound suddenly because alwaysgoesup.)
> I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, find that underlying conditions, including a lack of reciprocity in our bilateral trade relationships, disparate tariff rates and non-tariff barriers, and U.S. trading partners’ economic policies that suppress domestic wages and consumption, as indicated by large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and economy of the United States. That threat has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States in the domestic economic policies of key trading partners and structural imbalances in the global trading system. I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to this threat.
Does not seem they've addressed their self-imposed "national emergency".
¹ https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/regu...
Many top economies have trade deficits. China is a unique example that goes against that, although I believe China is trying to have their population spend more rather than save.
This claim seems like it warrants at least some qualifying statements. Certainly you'd acknowledge where there are situations in which a trade imbalance is a net negative?
The only solution is to swap out leadership of Atlanta FED. That way, we can have more positive reports.
Jan - October Trade Deficit Declines on Higher Exports, Lower Imports
Nov - US trade deficit widens by the most in nearly 34 years in November