> The things that dominate middle class budgets: food, housing, medicine, education, are surprisingly local
> The economists who claim that tariffs will harm normal Americans were also the economists who claimed that sanctions would destroy the Russian economy. They had the opposite effect, for reasons that still remain somewhat unclear.
> It is also notable that Chinese competitiveness has only increased as they have engaged in decades of state economic planning and market barriers. The economists who have told us since Reagan that this is inefficient and stupid might be ... wrong.
You are quite wrong there with all of those three points.
#1. a lot of food items come from Mexico, South America, Asia also. Housing material from Canada and China. A lot of meds come from Asia especially India. Majority of Stationary is manufactured in China as well.
#2. Russia is struggling with economy. But remember it has a lot of help from China, Iran, N Korea, and India. That offset a lot of sanctions. Europe is still buying gas from them.
#3. I’ve to remind you this - China exports in trillions.
#1. Total US food imports are about $200B. That's about 10% of US household spending on food, measured by supermarket plus restaurant sales ($800B + $1T).
#2. It's hard to know what's going on in Russia.
#3. High exports don't disprove GP's claim about "state economic planning and market barriers". In fact, they prove the success of those policies and help China maintain a $1T trade surplus, the very opposite of the US's situation.
One thing to note when comparing imports to spending. Import numbers are based on the commercial invoice value (i.e., how much it cost to produce) while spending is based on the sale price. So it's an...apples and oranges comparison. But I agree with the broader point that a lot of what we eat is produced here (especially meat).
>One thing to note when comparing imports to spending. Import numbers are based on the commercial invoice value (i.e., how much it cost to produce) while spending is based on the sale price. So it's an...apples and oranges comparison.
The context of this is the impact of tariffs on households' budget, and in that context, invoice value is fine, because that's the value on which tariffs are applied. 30% tariffs don't mean all foods go up 30%, it means it goes up by 6% (20% of 30%).
Why would you include restaurants in household food spending rather than something like entertainment?
About 25-33% of resturant sales are the cost of food. So you can break out the total spent on food pretty easily.
> That's about 10% of US household spending on food
Isn't ~10% spending on food like a historical best of any country ever?
I'm confused what this means? I think OP meant that 10% of the _spending on food_ is imported, so 90% of the household spending on food is from domestic markets.