you know where the question is going. can we throw more money at this problem? do we need more money to stimulate this economy? the more stimulus is not going to help. no reason to expect a trillion dollars will work any better than the $800 billion we already spent or are spending the the real issue is the big trade deficit. the overvalued dollar vis-a-vis the chinese and indian rupe are holding back. the tradeable services, manufacturing, mining and so forth, that s where the real problems are in this jobs report. and we are not making any progress there. the president if he wants to get the economy going again will have to deal with china on the trade deficit. more stimulus and more, you know, weatherproofing projects. green buildings and the rest is not going to get us from here to there. we are going to hear from the president. we will see if he addresses your concerns shortly. always good to see you. you enjoy your holiday weekend. thanks so much for being here.
i think what he s talking about is we have a big trade deficit with the rest of the world. our cumulative deficit equals the cumulative surplus of the rest of the world. they, therefore, have much more at risk in a trade war than we do. that s what i believe he was meaning to say. but is that the case? you slap this on steel, there are more jobs in this country based on using steel to make a product versus the number of jobs you may save in the steel industry itself. sure, but that makes an implicit assumption that s false. and the false assumption is that just because there are more people in the consuming industries, there will be a net loss of jobs. that s not the case at all. okay. we re going to have retaliations on blue jeans, on harley davidsons, on bourbon, retaliations with canada. what part of this doesn t turn into just a massive tax increase on consumers? well, what are we talking about right now?
nicolas sarkozy and napoleon bonaparte in france. let s get started. it s been a week of big economic news. china announced a huge trade surplus. the united states announced a big trade deficit. and markets were mostly down. joining me to talk about all of this is jeffrey sachs, the director of columbia university s earth institute and one of the world s most famous economists. jeff, people would think of you, and i tend to think of you, as a guy with left-wing political leanings, you know, generally speaking a liberal. but the stuff you ve been writing recently has been very worried about the deficit, which one traditionally tends to think of as more of a kind of concern of conservative economists. so why are you not comfortable with the keynesian arguments of the administration, of economists like paul krugman,
bonaparte in france. let s get started. it s been a week of big economic news. china announced a huge trade surplus. the united states announced a big trade deficit. and markets were mostly down. joining me to talk about all of this is jeffrey sachs, the director of columbia university s earth institute and one of the world s most famous economists. jeff, people would think of you, and i tend to think of you, as a guy with left-wing political leanings, you know, generally speaking a liberal. but the stuff you ve been writing recently has been very worried about the deficit, which one traditionally tends to think of as more of a kind of concern of conservative economists. so why are you not comfortable with the keynesian arguments of the administration, of economists like paul krugman, which is the economy is doing