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The United States And International Trade

Decent Essays

When Americans think of national security, they tend to think in terms of military threats.
But national security is also a question of maintaining a nation 's way of life, whether people have the jobs and the goods that they 're accustomed to.
Increasingly, we 've asked that question in the context of international trade.
Many of the goods that we buy come from abroad.
Each day about six million containers of the kind that you can see behind me arrive in the United States from other countries, carrying everything from television sets to clothes to toys-- you name it.
That globalized economy has turned out to be both a challenge and an opportunity for the United States.
The United States has important comparative advantages.
We have a vibrant tech sector, and we have the most fertile agricultural sector in the world.
The two sectors, through international trade, have generated millions of American jobs.
But we also have comparative disadvantages.
The wage scale in the United States is much higher than it is in countries like China and India and Guatemala.
That means that those goods often can be produced more cheaply abroad.
That 's good for consumers-- we pay less for the goods we buy as a result.
But it also means that millions of American jobs have been lost to foreign firms.
The fact that global trade involves winners and losers has made it one of the most important policy issues of our time.
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US foreign policy is rooted in what 's called the national

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