[erobbins]

> Because the U.S. economy is primarily internally driven; trade is only about 15% of GDP. So more important than the balance of trade is how that trade impacts the domestic economy.

That's almost scarier, really. It's a big shell game with money just moving in circles.

[munk-a]

Not at all (inherently). Most economies have traditionally been internally driven with a lot of wealth production from agriculture, raw material gathering and the finishing of those materials - it's only in the industrial era that we saw the export of goods for finishing in other countries emerge as a thing that could occur. But, if some rare earth minerals are imported into Fakistan and then turned into an iPhone - then the labour exchange to add that value would be within the "internally driven" header mentioned above... as that's value that's been created domestically and can either be used to exchange for new goods abroad (where it becomes a trade deficit) or else just consumed domestically.