May 01, 2014
Incredibly, the NYT article on Bill Clinton’s economic legacy left out the most important facts. The value of the dollar began to rise after Robert Rubin became Treasury Secretary and openly espoused a high dollar policy. He put muscle behind this policy with his handling of the bailout from the East Asian financial crisis which caused the dollar to soar against the currencies of our trading partners. (Lloyd Bentsen, Clinton’s first Treasury Secretary, allowed the dollar to fall. This was supposed to allow an increase in net exports to fill the gap in demand created by Clinton’s deficit reduction package.)
The high dollar led to a fall in exports, as our goods became more expensive to people in other countries. It also led to a surge in imports, which became very cheap. As a result, the trade deficit rose to almost 4 percent of GDP ($680 billion a year in today’s economy) and eventually peaked at almost 6 percent of GDP ($1,020 billion in today’s economy) in 2005. Currently the deficit is around $500 billion or 3.0 percent of GDP.
This trade deficit corresponds to income that is generated in the United States but is creating demand elsewhere rather than in the United States. It is very difficult to find ways to replace this demand, especially in a political environment where people like Bill Clinton tout the virtues of deficit reduction.
The trade deficit is by far the main cause of the “secular stagnation” that many economists, most notably former Clinton Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, have been worrying about in recent years. It certainly should have been discussed in any article on the Clinton legacy.
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