G.D.P AND IMPORTS (OR NET EXPORTS)
In 2016, two of Donald Trump's economic advisers wrote a paper titled 'Scoring the Trump Economic Plan'. They were Peter Navarro (an economics professor with a PhD from Harvard) and Wilbur Ross (a businessman). Today, Peter Navarro is Donald Trump's senior trade adviser and Wilbur Ross is America's Commerce Secretary (trade minister).
In it, they wrote:
"The growth in any nation's gross domestic product (GDP) - and therefore its ability to create jobs and generate additional income and tax revenues - is driven by four factors: consumption growth, the growth in government spending, investment growth, and net exports. When *net exports are negative*, that is, when a country runs a trade deficit by importing more than it exports, this *subtracts from growth*."
Now a country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is the total economic output produced *inside* that country. This output is consumed by 4 entities: households, firms, government and foreigners - so we have consumption (C), investment (I), govt spending (G) and exports (X) respectively. To get the GDP, we just add these 4 things. But these 4 components also include some things which were made *outside* the country - that is: made in other countries and imported into this country. So these things must be excluded. Hence we subtract imports (M) from these 4 components.
Thus we get the GDP equation:
Y = C + I + G + X - M
or Y = C + I + G + NX (where NX = X - M)
The second form is just for convenience - to reduce the number of terms from 5 to 4. But we are not subtracting imports just from exports - we are subtracting it from all the 4 components. Of course, arithmetically it makes no difference. But the economic meaning is important - and must be understood correctly.
Some people see the '-M' term (or the 'NX' term) and wrongly think that imports *reduce* GDP. This, as we have just seen, is definitely not the case. We subtract imports simply because:
1. They are included in C, I, G and X
2. But they are not made inside the country
So imports do not reduce GDP. And it definitely does not reduce GDP growth either. In fact, research has proved that total trade (exports + imports) increases growth. Therefore Peter Navarro and Wilbur Ross have made a very basic economics mistake . . .
Fun-facts:
# Harvard's economics department is ranked #1 in the world.
# 13 Harvard PhDs have won the Nobel Economics Prize - second only to MIT (14).
# The paper has since then been deleted from Donald Trump's official website.