The Balance of Payments includes three variables:
(1) Current Account (A.K.A. the 'trade deficit')
(2) Capital Account / Financial Account
(3) Errors & Ommisions

Since we use a fiat currency (a currency that is made up rather than using a standard like gold), the Capital Account plus #3 always equal the Current Account. If we don't like having a trade deficit, I say limit foreign investment in our county.

Note that this idea should only work because we use Monopoly money instead of gold. However, it beats a trade war.

I say that any company which says "made in america" which dooes not manufacture in america should have thier headquarters exported from america and we can probably come close to balancing our accounts.

some times you just cannot get a product that is made in the US of A... i buy american if the option exists but some times there is no choice but to buy forigen made because there is no american made counterpart....

All,

I apologize for the 'roughness' of the topic - this is the first time I've started a thread and it didn't come out as smoothly as I wanted.

Both of you are focusing on our trade with other countries. In the case of the United States, our media calls this the "Trade Deficit". Many years ago I had an epiphany that there is another half of this discussion. This other half is the foreign countries turning around and reinvesting the money. For some bizarre reason, economists describe this as us borrowing from them instead of them investing in us; however, when Obama talks about us borrowing from China he is referring (albeit, he probably doesn't know it) to the other half of the trade equation I'm talking about.

My purpose is to find a way to articulate to folks that to get foreigners to increase their buying of US products, we simply need to stop allowing them to investing here (actually, I would slowly reduce new investment).

Let me put this another way: China has one or two TRILLION dollars sitting in the U.S. Could either of you two find some use for a sliver of that stuff? I could! I would even be willing to provide goods & services to China in exchange for paying off my mortgage.

Again, I'm not saying we need the Chinese to dump that money immediately. Simply reduce their investment in our economy, forcing them to buy goods and services instead.