U.S. Senate candidate Art Small says the nation’s trade deficit is part of an “economic axis of evil” that must be addressed. Small, the democrat who’s running against U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley, says the trade deficit, along with other federal government financial liabilities like the national debt, present “enormous threats to our future wealth and welfare. Small says the problem is the U.S. is importing twice as much as we export and most trade agreements fail to address the problem. Small says “you can tweak” or “fine-tune” trade agreements, but Small says he doesn’t believe “any of those things are going to work.” Small is endorsing a plan devised by Warren Buffett, the Omaha investment guru. Buffett wrote an article in Fortune magazine outlining a system of tradable export certificates. If a U.S. company exports a million dollars of widgets would get a million dollars worth of export certificates, and a company in another country that wants to import goods would have to buy those export certificates. Small says with the current trade imbalance, those certificates would be worth a lot of money but once the amount of goods coming into the U.S. matches the amount being exported to other countries, the certificates would be worthless. Small concedes the idea can’t be outlined on a bumper sticker. Small says it’s a complicated approach, but he says you can’t solve the trade problem with a “30 second soundbite.”
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