Trade Deficit Hits Record $725.8 As American Manufacturing Jobs Disappear By The Millions

As large American employers such as GM and Ford with high paying union manufacturing jobs lay off tens of thousands of workers, American textile plants close, and more than 3 million total American manufacturing jobs have been lost in the last several years, the trade deficit with foreign nations hits an all time record high of $725.8 billion dolars in 2005, up 17% for the previous record set in 2004 of $617.6 billon dollars.

The trade deficit with China hit over $200 billion in 2005, a new record. And new record trade deficits with Japan, Europe, OPEC, Canada and Mexico also were set in 2005. In virtually no region on planet earth were American products able to sell better than the often cheaply produced imports from many areas that tend to displace American jobs.

And while highly paid union workers at GM and Ford struggle for their jobs as both companies lay off workers and seek to cut pension costs, some companies such as Honda actually saw a 20% sales increase in the U.S. in 2005, with 87,000 vehicles shipped through just the Port Of Portland alone, and many more sent through ports in Seattle and Los Angeles. A new possible business transacation may sell many of the largest American ports to a United Arab Emirates Corporation, despite the fact that many terrorists come from this MidEast nation.

Record amounts of foreign oil, automobiles, consumer electronics, food, toys, clothing, tools, auto parts, housewares and other items continue to flood America. Some large box stores such as Wal-Mart are now a full 8% of the U.S. GNP, and take in $35 million an hour largely acting as vendor for cheaply made foreign goods. Only a very small percentage of the nonfood items sold by Wal-Mart are U.S. produced goods.

With the U.S. trade deficit growing at this 17% rate in a single year, and the U.S. economy as a whole only showing a slight growth of about 3.3% hardly even keeping pace with population growth, the rate at which the American manufacturing of goods disappears relates directly to a huge loss in American manufacturing where the U.S. steadily becomes only a consumer of goods, not a producer. The U.S. is rapidly becoming a nation of lowly paid service workers acting only as vendors for foreign made goods.

All of this will mean the steady decline of the American "middle class", with a heavier class distinction between the "haves and have nots". It will also make the possibility that American cities can work their way out of tax shortfall problems by counting on full employment less likely to work as more and more of the total U.S. economy is shipped overseas each year and lower wage service jobs mean less tax revenues for education, police, fire or social services.

And so-called "free trade" treaties such as NAFTA, CAFTA and new ones with Central America and South Korea as complete failures to improve the flow of American goods to these areas, as only a wider trade deficit has resulted in these areas. In addition wages in Mexico have actually declined as a result of NAFTA, and farmers in Mexico and Soth America have been hurt by a flow of cheaply produced corporate farm corn and wheat, destroying the living standard of many in this region, only increasing the illegal immigration problem to the U.S. as many South American farm families seek economic refuge in the U.S. as NAFTA has created an "economic dustbowl" for these families.

The decline of the U.S. as a manufacturing superpower is a problem of our own making. The failure of American voters to only support politicians who make the interests of the U.S. number one has resulted in trade agreements that have been one-sided and have created a cyclone of America being sucked down to an economic decline as a society. Most world empires only survive about 200 years. Our society is living on borrowed times as a total failure to stand up for our own best interests has made the U.S. the world's greatest patsy for other foreign nations to take economic advantage of. Someday there will be no U.S. as we know it, as the other nations of the world will economically subdivide the U.S. Just like the Berlin Wall which subdivided Germany, foreign economic powers are subdividing the U.S. , and Americans are only becoming workers to foreign masters.