Short-Sighted Economics

   The U.S.  economy is doing well, but the president continues to push protectionist politics onto an economy that does not need protection.
  Exports are increasing and imports are decreasing, which means the international trade deficit is less. The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the goods and services deficit was $43.1 billion in May, down $3 billion from April. Exports, meanwhile, rose by $4.1 billion, while imports increased by just $1.1 billion.
   All this in an $18 trillion economy.
   Separately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said the nation added 213,000 jobs in June, while the unemployment rate edged up slightly to $.0 percent, an indication that more people returned to the workforce and were looking for jobs. Some 600,000 people joined the workforce and began looking for jobs in June, the Labor Department said. Most of the job increases were in professional and business services, manufacturing, and health care, while the retail trade sector lost jobs.
   Overall, the U.S. economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), expanded by 2 percent in the first three months of the year.
   All this, however, does not stop the president from complaining about competition from other nations, and building economic walls to protect American business from what he calls unfair trade practices.
   He ordered some $34 billion in tariffs to be levied against goods coming from China, and promised more to come, even as China moved to impose an equal sum of import taxes on American goods.
   As noted in an earlier post, a tariff is nothing more than a tax on imports, and only sparks a trade war with the target nation.
   A long time ago, a poet noted that "no man is an island," and the same goes for a nation. An economy in isolation faces only stunted growth, because growth comes only from mutual trade, and the wider the trade, the more opportunity for growth.
   This is a basic principle as taught in Economics 101, something the president, who claims to have a degree in economics, should know. Unless, of course, he was absent from class and never read the textbook, something he has admitted to in the past.