Imports

I. Introduction
In his January 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama set the
goal of doubling U.S. exports within five years (by the end of 2014). From
the president on down, much is being said about efforts to promote U.S.
exports, especially of manufactured goods, in order to increase U.S.
employment. 1 Boosting exports is a worthy goal because exports foster
economic growth and support jobs. Also, this goal focuses attention of the
federal government on the important task of eliminating barriers that too
often shut U.S. exports out of overseas markets.
However, the narrow focus of policy makers on U.S. exports, coupled with
their silence on imports, has led the American public and many policy
makers to believe that “exports are good,” and “imports are bad.” 2
Consequently, when U.S. lawmakers vote on trade agreements intended
to strengthen the U.S. economy and competitiveness, they worry they will
face opposition from an American public protesting expected job losses
resulting from a flood of imports.
To a very large extent, the bias against imports in the view of policy
makers, and in the news media, is due to a longstanding failure by those
who benefit from imports to present the full picture of their impacts on the
1
See U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, “National Export Initiative,”
http://trade.gov/nei/.
2
Another important contribution to this notion that “imports are bad” is due to simple math.
Economists calculate U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) with a simple equation learned by every beginning
economics student: Y = C + I + G + (X – M), where M stands for imports. To calculate GDP (Y), imports are
subtracted from consumer spending (C), U.S. investment (I) government spending (G), and exports (X) to
calculate U.S. output (GDP). They are subtracted because there is import value included in C, I, G and X,
and to ensure that the value of GDP measures only U.S. output, the value of imports must be subtracted.
(See Daniel J. Ikenson, “Made in America: Increasing Jobs through Exports and Trade,” testimony before
the Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, Committee on Energy and Commerce, U.S.
House of Representatives, March 16, 2011.) But that need to avoid including foreign value in the calculation
of U.S. output is not widely known. What is widely known and reported is that the value of imports is
subtracted to calculate the value of the U.S. economy and U.S. economic growth. Hence the popular
perception: if imports are subtracted, they must be a “negative” for the economy.