The trade-offs of the trade deficit

Make Me Smart

Marketplace

Business, News

4.6 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today we’re talking about the trade deficit at the request of some of our curious listeners. Since the mid-’70s, the U.S. has persistently been importing more goods than it exports. Is that such a bad thing? We’ll hear from Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, about why the U.S. has a trade deficit, whether it’s a good or bad thing, and why a country’s overall trade deficit matters more than deficits with specific countries.

Then, we’ll get into how online political donations are fueling election campaigns this year. Plus, the malleable idea of “old age” and the wonders of happy sheep in a solar field.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

- “Trade deficits aren’t good or bad, just weird” from Marketplace

- “The U.S. Trade Deficit: How Much Does It Matter?” from the Council on Foreign Relations

- Historical U.S. Trade Deficits from the St. Louis Fed

- “Chinese Exports Are Threatening Biden’s Industrial Agenda” from The New York Times

- “Trump promised to rebalance trade in North America. The US trade deficit keeps climbing.” from Politico

- “How online donations are fueling the election” from Politico

- Polling in 2024 from Reuters

- Opinion | “What Departing Lawmakers Think About Congress” from The New York Times

- “Young US adults reach key milestones later in life than in the past like marriage, full-time job, financial independence” from Pew Research Center

Want more “Make Me Smart” in your life? Sigh up for our newsletter at marketplace.org/smarter.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey Marketplace listeners, you know around here we like to think you're never too young to learn about the economy and financial basics.
0:05.6	That's why we're bringing the million bazillion live tour to school to teach important lessons about budgeting, investing, saving, and more.
0:12.8	It's all the fun of the podcast, but now live,
0:15.4	immersive and interactive.
0:17.4	Special thanks to our tour partner, Green Light,
0:19.8	the debit card and money app for kids and teens.
0:22.6	Learn more about greenlight at greenlight.com
0:25.1	slash million.
0:26.4	That is greenlight dot com slash million.
0:28.9	Here we go. Hey everybody I'm
0:35.8	I'm Kyle Rizdall welcome back to make me smart where none of us is as smart as all
0:39.4	of us.
0:40.4	And I'm Kimberly Adams.
0:42.0	It is Tuesday, April 30th last week. We heard from Tamara in
0:47.0	Colorado who said that she thought she knew about trade deficits, but after learning
0:51.8	about the history of the U.S. trade deficits, but after learning about the history of the US trade
0:54.3	deficit, she realized that there was a bit more to the story as there is for so many
0:58.8	things. And what we also then heard from some other folks who had follow-up questions about that.
1:05.8	So we are going to dig into the trade deficit today, why we have one, what it means for the American
1:10.1	economy, also the global economy by the way. Here to make us smarter about that is
1:13.9	Iswar Prasad. He is a professor of trade policy at Cornell, also a senior fellow
1:17.5	at Brookings. Professor Prasad, welcome to the program. Nice to be on-cay.
	...

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