(snip)"Think about this. Currently, foreign tour operators are organizing shopping tours, where foreign citizens fly to America for the specific purpose of buying goods cheaper here than they can buy the same goods in their own countries. Of course, most of the goods they are buying, such as clothing, electronics, jewelry, etc., were not made in America in the first place. How absurd is it for Italians to come to New York to buy Italian made shoes cheaper than they can find them in Milan? Does it make sense for foreign producers to offer products to Americans for less than their own citizens? Of course not. In short order the free market will correct this by raising prices here in America and lowering them in the rest of the world.
Many naively believe that this scenario is unlikely as foreigners will indefinitely prop up the U.S. economy in order to preserve their "best" export market. However, the same argument could have been made regarding mortgage lenders and subprime borrowers. After all, based on the outsize fees generated by subprime lending products, risky borrowers were clearly the mortgage industry's best customers. Given their profitability, why didn't lenders simply extend subprime borrowers even more credit to preserve the market? The obvious answer is that at some point lenders discovered that the market was not worth preserving. They realized that the short-term profits came at the expense of far greater future losses.
The same revelations are about to be made around the world as other nations realize that selling consumer goods to Americans is a losing proposition, as the profits they believe they are earning today will simply evaporate tomorrow. When that happens, just as subprime borrowers are losing access to mortgage credit, America's subprime consumers will find far fewer bargain basement imported products at their local Wal-Mart."(snip)



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