Obama’s Debt Outsourcing American Sovereignty, Distorting Trade

Any day now we will breach the $16 trillion debt mark.  Thank you Obama and the Democrats for mortgaging off the future of our children.  You won’t be around in 50 years to bail them out like you did your crony money-bundlers at GM and the UAW.

One of the important components of our federal debt in the share of debt owned by foreign countries.  We like to view ourselves as the pride of the world, but there’s not much pride in countries like China and Mexico owning our debt.  Terence Jeffrey of CNS News reports that our foreign debt has hit a new record of $5.2923 trillion, a gain of 72.3% since Obama took office.  Talk about “outsourcing jobs,” Barack.  Obama is outsourcing the indebtedness of our children and grandchildren to foreign countries.

Our foreign debt is now equal to more than one-third of the entire U.S. economy.  China owns $1.164 trillion of our debt, while Japan is the second largest stakeholder at $1.119 trillion.

For far too long, political economists have focused on the problems related to our trade deficit.  But as the Heritage Foundation regularly points out, the deficit of exports is not inherently the problem.  Unlike the fiscal deficit, in which revenues are good (to the extent that they don’t represent over-burdensome taxation) and deficits are bad, the trade deficit is not so black and white.  It would obviously be sophomoric to assert that exports are good and imports are bad.  A plethora of cheap imports help consumers save money so they can invest in other aspects of the economy, and even expand businesses and create more jobs.  Not surprisingly, the trade deficit was the smallest during the nadir of the depression when income, investment, and consumption plummeted.

To the extent that the trade deficit is harmful, it’s only because it is fueled by the fiscal deficits and other anti-free market interventions by government, such as over-taxation and regulation.  Think about it, instead of investing in more productive aspects of the American economy, foreign countries have invested $5.3 trillion to service our debt so politicians can grow government and create dependency.

As you can see from this Heritage Chart, the government has sold more treasury bonds to foreign debt holders than the value of major exports.

So as Obama racks up more debt like a drunken socialist, remember that he is not only bankrupting our country, he is also outsourcing the destiny of our children to foreign nations.  Unfortunately, due to the stupidity of a few Republicans, we are now talking about skinny-dipping in the Sea of Galilee instead of the crushing debt.

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