Economics in One Lesson



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Economics-in-One-Lesson 2

C
HAPTER
12
The Drive for Exports
E
xceeded only by the pathological dread of imports that affects all
nations is a pathological yearning for exports. Logically, it is true,
nothing could be more inconsistent. In the long run imports and
exports must equal each other (considering both in the broadest sense,
which includes such “invisible” items as tourist expenditures and ocean
freight charges). It is exports that pay for imports, and vice versa. The
greater exports we have, the greater imports we must have, if we ever
expect to get paid. The smaller imports we have, the smaller exports
we can have. Without imports we can have no exports, for foreigners
will have no funds with which to buy our goods. When we decide to
cut down our imports, we are in effect deciding also to cut down our
exports. When we decide to increase our exports, we are in effect
deciding also to increase our imports.
The reason for this is elementary. An American exporter sells his
goods to a British importer and is paid in British pounds sterling. But
he cannot use British pounds to pay the wages of his workers, to buy
his wife’s clothes, or to buy theater tickets. For all these purposes he
needs American dollars. Therefore his British pounds are of no use to
him unless he either uses them himself to buy British goods or sells
them to some American importer who wishes to use them to buy
British goods. Whichever he does, the transaction cannot be completed
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until the American exports have been paid for by an equal amount of
imports.
The same situation would exist if the transaction had been con-
ducted in terms of American dollars instead of British pounds. The
British importer could not pay the American exporter in dollars unless
some previous British exporter had built up a credit in dollars here as
a result of some previous sale to us. Foreign exchange, in short, is a
clearing transaction in which, in America, the dollar debts of foreign-
ers are cancelled against their dollar credits. In England, the pound
sterling debts of foreigners are cancelled against their sterling credits.
There is no reason to go into the technical details of all this, which
can be found in any good textbook on foreign exchange. But it should
be pointed out that there is nothing inherently mysterious about it (in
spite of the mystery in which it is so often wrapped), and that it does
not differ essentially from what happens in domestic trade. Each of us
must also sell something, even if for most of us it is our own services
rather than goods, in order to get the purchasing power to buy.
Domestic trade is also conducted in the main by crossing off checks
and other claims against each other through clearing houses.
It is true that under an international gold standard discrepancies in
balances of imports and exports are sometimes settled by shipments
of gold. But they could just as well be settled by shipments of cotton,
steel, whisky, perfume, or any other commodity. The chief difference
is that the demand for gold is almost indefinitely expansible (partly
because it is thought of and accepted as a residual international
“money” rather than as just another commodity), and that nations do
not put artificial obstacles in the way of receiving gold as they do in
the way of receiving almost everything else. (On the other hand, of
late years they have taken to putting more obstacles in the way of
exporting
gold than in the way of exporting anything else: but that is
another story.)
Now the same people who can be clearheaded and sensible when
the subject is one of domestic trade can be incredibly emotional and
muddleheaded when it becomes one of foreign trade. In the latter
field they can seriously advocate or acquiesce in principles which they
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