[adventured]

> It strikes me as extremely odd that it's become so normalized that the U.S.'s role in trade is simply as a buyer of goods.

It should strike you as odd, what you're saying is wrong.

The US exports $2.5 trillion worth of goods and services, including $1.7 trillion of goods.

The US is the world's #2 exporter of goods. With services included, the US is nearly the world's #1 exporter. In 2018, the US was behind China by only about $80 billion in total exports. That's nearly three times the #4 export country, Japan.

[dternyak]

Of course, I'm familiar that the U.S. exports goods as well. Certainly the relationship specifically with China is one of a large and continuous trade deficit.

However, the broad intention of my previous comment is to illustrate that the narrative being that the U.S. is simply one of purchaser is lacking, or else if that narrative is correct, it will not be true for much longer once the trading partners catch on.

[JackFr]

The same question was said about Japan in the 1980's. There was much hand-wringing over our trade deficit with Japan. (Though I had an econ professor back then who I thought put it best: "We're getting cars and they're getting pieces of paper, and somehow we're the ones getting screwed?")

[_dps]

The professor's quip is cute but myopic. The pieces of paper are claims on future production so the true cost is seen later.

The end result was

  - American Boomers got cars

  - Japanese boomers got USD
  
  - Japanese investors then spent much of the USD on things like US real estate investment vehicles (hardly Japan only, any country that collected large amounts of USD due to trade deficit)

  - American Boomers in prime markets saw tremendous returns on real estate
  
  - and American millennials 30 years later got priced out of houses

Yes I know foreign investment is not the only cause of rapid price growth in real estate. But it is a significant contributor.