Hacker News Reader

Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

> Long-term trade deficits are intrinsically bad.

> The intrinsically bad part is the trade imbalance,

The basis of your comment appears to be recieved wisdom from an uncredited source, what many regard as an opinion of dubious standing.

eg:

  Back on the goods side, when the US economy is robust and people have disposable income, imports naturally increase. Ultimately, while trade deficits indicate economic dynamics, they are not inherently negative nor do they signify economic weakness.

  Rather, they often reflect a nation’s economic structure and consumer preference for diverse global products. After all, Australia has run trade deficits for decades, including with the US, and is one of the wealthiest countries in the world.

from: https://theconversation.com/no-thats-not-what-a-trade-defici...

and numerous other professional opinions from economics and trade.

View on HN

The fundamental precept here is that foreign investment of goods is more preferable to domestic investment of goods [1], so running a negative trade balance is dispreferable.

Trump is a textbook Mercantilist (positive trade balance inherently good [2]). Rather than magazine articles, see the Palgrave (the definitive encyclopedic reference for Econ) entry [1] and the Wikipedia page [2] for the arguments and history.

I always find reading the highest quality material leads to the highest quality thinking—there’s certainly a reason why modern LLM training mixtures might weight wikipedia tokens 5x and webtext 0.5x. :>

[1]: https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1057/978-1-3...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism

> Rather than magazine articles

There are many sources .. I linked to an opinion from two national economic advisors with careers in trade and economics.

You haven't countered their opinon or backed up your opinion, in fact you've strengthen my position that your axiomatic foundation is just another opinion of some.

See:

* When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

* Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work.

~ https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

* Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Be charitable. I provided encyclopedic reference out of a mutual discovery interest. Magazine articles[/opeds] may—in your words—present “opinions of some,” whereas reference-grade material provides a broad and citable foundation—ostensibly what you are looking for (“your axiomatic foundation is just another opinion of some”).

> You haven't [..] backed up your opinion

In the spirit of “respond to the strongest plausible interpretation” and good faith, I think you may have missed the argument I was making above. :>

I am positing a reformulation/distillation of “positive trade balance preference” as “preference for foreign investment,” drawing on Palgrave, although perhaps controversially. The former is controversial, especially if seen as a-priori; the latter mundane.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com