Considerations Regarding the Ways to Reduce the US Trade Deficit

In a recently published (Business Week, November 2, 2009) article, the distinguished columnist, Michael Mandel, pointed out some interesting issues concerning the US trade gap and the consequences it has on the entire global economy and economic system. In this kind of respect, he finds three possible ways for America to reduce this trade deficit and to relaunch its own economy on (new!)a good track. The three scenarios he finds out as being really possible for US to narrow its trade gap, actually, are: a) the so-called “business as usual” scenario that assumes the actual US trade gap will remain pretty much unchanged or rise slightly; b) the so-called “global restructuring” scenario that assumes the US government will not assure enough stimulus package or the US dollar will drop further or both; c)the so-called “innovative growth scenario that assumes the US will manage to export more innovative and knowledge-based goods and services and the US trade gap will go down smoothly without affecting the global growth. Far from trying to make any kind of polemic with the article’s author we still have to add that – and this is a point of view being a little bit different from the author’s – the US trade deficit is the cause as well as the main symptom of the global economic imbalances.