Ben Cole directed me to this interesting story:
The National Association of Realtors released a report Tuesday that said foreign buyers and recent immigrants spent an estimated $153 billion on American properties in the year ending March 2017. That was a 49% increase over the previous year and the highest level since record-keeping began in 2009.
The purchases accounted for 10% of the total value of existing home sales in the U.S. The report did not include new homes.
The breakdown of sales between foreigners and recent immigrants was about 50:50.
[I wish they had data on new homes, as that’s the sort of home that foreigners tend to prefer.]
Of course the sale of homes to immigrants is not an export, but it does have a similar economic impact. However the sale of homes to foreigners does represent a US export, and creates lots of goods jobs for American blue collar workers. (Note that it doesn’t really matter whether they buy new or existing homes; the net effect on the housing market is the same.) So the protectionists should be rejoicing, right?
Actually, just the opposite. The US government does not even count these as exports. Instead they are treated the same as net borrowing. They are considered a part of America’s current account deficit, leading to all sorts of silly hand-ringing about how America is borrowing too much and living beyond our means. In fact, we do borrow too much (due to the tax advantage of doing so), but that has nothing to do with the current account deficit.
I have a solution. Treat international trade the way that we treat trade between American states. Stop collecting records on imports and exports. We don’t have data on the CA deficit of Texas or the CA surplus of Massachusetts, and that lack of data doesn’t seem to cause any problems. So stop doing so for the US as a whole.
You can still collect data on America’s net debt position (good luck with that!), if you wish to.
PS. I have a post on “The German Problem” over at Econlog.