Trade deficits for the US begin at home

Thanks to fear mongering on the US presidential campaign trail, the trade debate and its impact on American workers is being distorted at both ends of the political spectrum. From China-bashing on the right to the backlash against the Trans-Pacific Partnership on the left, Republicans and Democrats both have mischaracterized foreign trade as the United States' greatest economic threat.

In 2015, the US had trade deficits with 101 countries - a multilateral trade deficit in the jargon of economics. But this cannot be pinned on one or two "bad actors", as politicians invariably put it. Yes, China - everyone's favorite scapegoat - accounts for the biggest portion of this imbalance. But the combined deficits of the other 100 countries are even larger. What the presidential candidates won't tell the American people is that the trade deficit and the pressures it places on hard-pressed middle-class workers stem from problems made at home. In fact, the real reason the US has such a massive multilateral trade deficit is that Americans don't save.

Total US saving - the sum total of the savings of families, businesses and the government sector - amounted to just 2.6 percent of the national income in the fourth quarter of 2015. That is a 0.6 percentage point drop year-on-year and less than half the 6.3 percent average that prevailed during the final three decades of the 20th century.