trade deficit

March trade deficit increases 43%; should have minimal impact on 1st quarter GDP

Our March trade deficit surged to the highest level in nearly 7 years as the ending of the west coast dock strike allowed ships that had been sitting offshore to unload.  The March report on our international trade in goods and services showed that our seasonally adjusted goods and services deficit rose by $15.5 billion, or 43%, to $51.4 billion in March, from a revised February deficit of $35.9 billion, which had itself fallen by $6.8 billion from January while the strike was underway.

The Fair Trade Fantasy

While America's nation-destroying trade deficit amounts to a black eye for the modern neoclassical school of economics, it has raised calls by non-economists to "level the playing field" in the form of fair trade. As one astute commenter pointed out, the term Fair Trade is generally used in the context of ensuring equitable treatment of workers, along with necessary legal reform in developing countries. I on the other hand am using the term as one might find it proposed in currency reform legislation (i.e. Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act).