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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

I think the whole trade deficit argument to be beyond stupid.

1. Sending machinery, food, equipment in exchange of pieces of paper with national heroes printed on them should make you think who's benefitting really from the deficit

2. This is the 21st century, you can't ignore services. How many Office and Adobe licenses, credit card transactions, Netflix subscriptions, Hollywood movies and shows, advertisement space online, US companies sells and it doesn't enter the trade argument?

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Services can’t fight a war or feed you. A nation that wishes to be a real power must be able to guarantee it can feed and protect its people.

America can feed every person in the country easily, we import luxury goods cause we like coffee and out of season vegetables not because we’ve lost the production capability. If anything we are over subsidizing calories.

We also have enough nukes to glass the surface of the planet, enough firearms for every man woman and child to dual would them and 7x the rest of the worlds military.

The US’s people don’t need protection from other nations we need protection from each other.

Also, America has no advantage in services. Americans aren't any smarter than anyone else. America has a lot of land, highways, and infrastructure - that's actual advantage. So we're just letting that rot or selling it to overseas oligarchs.

We may not be “smarter” than others but our culture, which prioritizes innovation and creativity, makes us comparatively better at inventing goods and services that people want to buy.

Alienating every allied nation with tariffs that come out of nowhere will surely help you win wars.

1. What's up with this obsession to be a "real" power? Plenty of countries in the world do just fine actually avoiding confrontation and minding their business. We should get back at competing at sports, culture, scientific achievements. I can understand the vanity of politicians making up enemies for the sake of it, a bit less what should be an educated crowd here to fall for this narrative.

2. We're talking about the US, the last country on the planet to have to worry about wars. First because it's blessed by geography and separated by two oceans from anything relevant. The US has fought many wars. None of them on their soil since the war with Canada 200 years ago. Second because it is always the aggressor, not the victim. Always. Third, it's the last country on the planet that has to worry about feeding its citizens or having the capabilities to fight a war. Be real and serious. Either in conventional or non conventional wars the US can destroy everything on this planet multiple times over. Drop all of that insecurity.

3. Even more the trade surplus of countries like Germany, Italy. China or Japan isn't good. These countries are working their assess to send stuff abroad, and getting pieces of paper in exchange. Those pieces of paper won't magically materialize tanks, trucks, drones, ships and food in case of a sudden need.

1. This mindset is a result of American hegemony. Before WW2, before the 90s really, no one thought this was a possibility.

2. Right but if it is dependent on a foreign nation for something vital that means it no longer can confidently assert its independence

3. Don’t disagree at all

The world has had interdependencies since trade began centuries ago. If a nation was independent, it usually meant that they had nothing anyone else wanted, and they were almost always poorer for it. And interdependency is good for peace: you don’t generally get into wars with your trading partners.

Independence is a stupid goal that’s promoted by selfish small-minded people who don’t understand how the world is better off when people trade.

I'm not sure food is a concern at all in the US. We have a shit ton of agriculture, and we have some of the highest obesity rates on the planet due to our immense surplus of food.

We also have the biggest military by far, and it's not even close. So that covers your two bases.

Our military is dependent on a manufacturing base that is dependent on China currently

obesity and food-supply are not in a linear relationship, pumping out some high sucrose corn syrup is one thing, having all the nutrients the population needs to stay healthy is another

We most definitely have all the nutrients the population needs to stay healthy. We have basically every vegetable ever, available all year. Ditto for fruits. Meat is in abundance, same with dairy and eggs. I don’t think it’s an issue.

Services feed me every day, yet I don’t grow my own food. I trade for it, using currency as an intermediary.

What I can do for myself, nations do every single day.

I don’t know what this “real power” language is about, but it sounds like claptrap to me.

It actually sounds like you live in an era where these things are guaranteed by a hyper power and are frankly out of touch with how international relations really work

Please, professor, teach us how international relations really work. Just let me grab my popcorn first.

(Seriously, knock it off with the attitude. You have no idea who you’re talking to. People with highly varied educational and career backgrounds are represented here.)

Appealing to credentials is irrelevant and bad faith, the fact is your ability to make a good living purely in services is irrelevant to the fact that nations have real national defense to consider and the last 80 years of global trade has been upheld by American military might. Your credentials mean nothing if you can’t appreciate how spoiled we have all been by this very unique system, and your arguments should stand on their own and your current argument is to respond to a discussion about securing vital industries with “I’m able to feed myself with just services” as if that scales to an entire nation that has been the one upholding global trade rather than a benefit of, and downstream, of that nation doing that. And that nation has until recently taken very serious steps at every turn to ensure its military and resource dominance so that people like you and I can feel comfortable with our office jobs.

I don’t have an attitude, it’s just annoying hearing people still pretend history is over and great power conflict is no longer a concern because we’ve reached utopia, and thinking that because they have a certain job that means real, cold and calculating, geopolitics is no longer a requirement.

The thing is, you're not really making a clear and persuasive case as to your position, which sounds like you're arguing against interdependency. Perhaps you mean something else, so if I'm mistaken, some clarity would be appreciated. As far as I can tell, you're only contending, without much support, that alternatives are worse.

> the last 80 years of global trade has been upheld by American military might

Have you considered whether these might be coincidental, not causative, and that the Bretton Woods system is largely responsible for this? Leading by example and through persuasion and making friends tends to be much more effective than building armies and making implied threats, dangling a Sword of Damocles over the world. (Case in point: the U.S. has never been able to bring Afghanistan, North Korea, or Iran into the fold, and keeps holding to the same failing strategies regarding these nations despite their persistent ineffectiveness.)

> I don’t have an attitude

I'm telling you how it's coming across. Calling someone "out of touch" is demeaning.

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