US runs a high-tech trade gap

[PfcHammer]

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p01s02-usec.html

US runs a high-tech trade gap
Exports fail to keep pace with imports, stirring concern about a key fount of jobs.
By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

For the first time on record, the United States has a deficit in high-tech trade, prompting concern about American competitiveness in key job-producing industries from biotechnology to aerospace.

That deficit appears to be widening, fueled in part by the trend of offshore outsourcing in areas such as software design. As computer parts have become commodities, production has long since moved to places such as Taiwan and, now, to China.

Trade gaps have opened in scientific instruments and in specialized industrial machinery. In commercial airplanes, among the most sophisticated of machines, America remains an export powerhouse, but Europe's Airbus consortium as of this year is selling more planes than Boeing.

By itself, a trade deficit is not necessarily a major problem for US industry, but experts worry that it symbolizes a deeper risk that America may fall behind in some of the very areas it is counting on for high-wage jobs.




Pathetic. Where are all of the benefits of outsourcing we were supposed to enjoy ?
Fortunately, we have a thriving trash pop culture for export to take up the slack.