Then feel free to offer any kind of evidence instead of recycling the same economic fallacies that have been repeated for over 2 and a half centuries. Give it a shot.
According to some economic ideologies. Not always. Fallacy of composition. Willing trade between two individuals is not quite the same as trade between two different large groups of individuals. Completely ignores the distinction between labor and capital, for one thing.
According to all modern economic ideologies . . . according to anyone who has ever engaged in voluntary trade, whether they are willing to admit it or not.
We've had threads debating this issue in the past. Should be somewhere in the Economics section. Usually it's the ignorant who think there's not another legitimate side on the perspective.
You don't understand the fallacy of composition. And, yes, even trade between two different groups of individuals creates wealth. Despite your superstitions, there isn't some kind of evil maaaaaaaaagical spell that gets cast just because the groups are large. And, sorry, but the groups often aren't that large. You forgot the part where these are ultimately exchanges between groups, not between countries. Did you forget when you pointed that out yourself?
It is usually the ignorant who think they can fake a "legitimate side" without offering anything to actually legitimate their side.
Taxes the foreign competitor businesses don't have to pay! Don't get me started on unfunded mandates.
I'm happy to talk about reality as soon as you are willing to join me there. I'm still talking about the basics of economics. You are still asking me to pretend that trade is zero sum while offering nothing to defend your case. I don't like engaging in such make-believe. I'd prefer a reason to consider such an alternative. You've offered none.
The above claims are not valid. 1) Jobs to not necessarily disappear on the basis of a Trade deficit. This is false. 2) The surplus comment is also not necessarily true 3) The idea that China will be able to import products from the US without paying for them - "because they own the means of production" is preposterous nonsense.
I'll make it extremely simple. Jobs. Distinction between labor and capital. Consider those, and you'll [be able to] see why fallacy of composition comes into play.
Why is that? Farm labor is cheap enough, undocumented Latin American migrants in the US. Farmland is a fixed capital cost. China has all the labor they need (almost). What they're trying to get from the US is agricultural commodities and ownership of capital. (Besides stealing all the technology they can get their hands on, a separate issue)
First off - your assumption that China be buying up the majority of US farmland is nonsense Second - your assumption that the ability of China to do this is on the basis of the deficit is highly flawed. Third - what does Chinese labor have to do with anything ?
Feel free to justify your claim .. I claim that in general your claim is false - and it is only in extreme cases that job losses result from a trade deficit. The fact you can rely on is that trade increases employment opportunity.
When this phase of the economic cycle ends, which it inevitably will, then the true results of huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and corporations will become evident. And it will be exacerbated by all the damage the Trump presidency has done to the the structure of world order and global cooperation. There is a reckoning coming and it will not be pretty because all the structural failures of 2008 are still in place such as consumer and government debt and basically stagnant wages - we will just have less ability to mitigate the damage......