I'm not asking "why trade?", I'm asking "why unmanaged national trade policy, uncoordinated with all other national policies?" isolating trade balances as pure barter isn't relevant; I was describing a trade lobby that is financializing the USA, and perverting Public Purpose to fiat gain barter doesn't scale because "free trade" ignores MANY other conditionalities like national security & cultural cohesion (just to name a few); trader lobby arguments reduce to a fallacy of complex composition the deeper nature of employment is return-on-coordination; things can get very off course when that little point is forgotten; this very context has been discussed; theoretically attractive JIT organization & cheapest cost can easily degrade resiliency & turn risk to uncertainty (& failure) that sort of thinking is exactly why we pursue such overly narrow policy metrics, then periodically have to fudge & reset our entire national policy

Exporting more is less bad? Why, exactly? Regardless of the fiat math, why would we want to make things for other people? Or send them raw goods? If they want our better-organized, more trusted, totally fiat currency, what could be cheaper for us? What does the USA population need from any other population, other than alternative, cheap labor? The only problem I see is internal, small-minded greed, resulting in a trend to also see US citizens ONLY as cheap labor, thereby turning both patriotism and operations on their head. That perspective always comes ONLY from a serious misunderstanding of operations, and generates a subsequent inability to scale them up. That's the definition of Luddites. The goal of other nations should be to also optimize operations, not expect any other population to do less! Nations are in an adaptive race, not yet in a symbiosis. Any population can invent a better way, and all are charged with doing so. The people who know how may have the opportunity of a job. The population that knows why will always be in charge. In social species, group-discernment is always the top of the job ladder. In short, the compounding return-on-group-coordination ALWAYS leaves any imaginable personal or sub-group return in the dust, by orders of magnitude. Ask the US Marine Corp! What part of this basic biological logic of social species are we failing to teach in our schools? That realization should be at the core of any concept of wealth and capitalism. When given the opportunity to import real goods in return for exporting entirely fiat contingency parsing, goals and strategic capability ... there are better options than trying to make that opportunity go away. Are we smart enough to leverage that option better, or only worse? If we don't, some more intrepid population will eventually do so. Why would we ever willingly choose to regress to what we can now delegate, instead of again extending ourselves to do what none before have done? Not scaling our own coordination abilities is always treason to nation and descendants. Exactly what is it about the infinite attributes of i/o ratios that we fear? Every complex context, and every adaptive organization living in those contexts can be described with a near-infinite polynomial of relevant factors. Exactly NONE of those factors will ever project - alone - to the extremes imagined. We've known that for a long, long time. "As a rule, men worry more about what they can't see than about what they can." Julius Caesar [describing Luddites?] www.brainyquote.com/qu... Why do so few current policy wonks appear to grasp that? Regardless of all the tactical details, we need more discernment in policy, ASAP!