Still Waiting for Those Exports to Double. And Waiting. And Waiting. December 11, 2012
Posted by geoff in News.trackback
As you may recall from a post in October, the President promised to double US exports in 5 years, with the clock starting in January of 2010. This wasn’t an idle promise: cranking up exports is one of his fundamental strategies to promote economic growth.
“If we’re going to grow, it’s going to be because of exports,” Mr. Obama told a meeting of business executives at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meetings in Hawaii in November [2011].
To reach that goal, exports have to climb to $280 billion by January 2015. Unfortunately for the President (and our economy) we stalled out at $180 billion for the past year:
The President doesn’t often make verifiable predictions, because every time he does, he falls on his face. I hate to discourage him from making concrete promises, but this one was wildly optimistic and beyond his control to keep.
The scariest part is that there must have been an economic advisor who told him that this was a sure thing. No wonder everything they’ve done has been ineffectual at best.
The problem is that someone told him to say that because people like to hear it and it makes him sound in charge. The problem is that the President has no idea how to do that or even what that means. The even bigger problem is that the advisor was probably Valerie Jarrett and she has no idea what that means either
The were counting on a robust rebound before the 2012 elections, as has occurred with every modern recession, and it didn’t happen. They didn’t factor in the predictable effects of Obamacare, nationalizing a big chunk of the auto industry, quantitative easing, downgrading our debt, the misguided $800B stimulus program, etc. etc. etc.
[...] Yes, the Bureau of Economic Analysis released January’s export data last week, so we can once again check to see how much progress the President is making toward his promise to double exports by January 2015. [...]