Is the U.S. deficit 'too big'?
Better yet, has the accumulation of years of trade deficits mortgaged our future? At this point, it seems the answer is no. We should begin to worry if the cost of servicing the debt is high or increasing rapidly. While the share of domestic national income going toward foreign debt service went from negative 2% (foreigners were paying net interest to us) around 1980 to about 3% today (we are paying them), the number is not at alarming levels. Considering that many households' debt service is 20% or more of annual income, it seems that the national debt has not yet reached frightening proportions. But this dimension is worth watching carefully.

As with any household or business decision to take on debt, it would be nice to do an analysis of whether the specific expenditures being financed by the national debt are justifiable. Unfortunately, we cannot identify the extent to which U.S. foreign borrowing financed consumption, investment, or government spending. It is important to keep in mind that everyone who borrowed money did so voluntarily. Unless there is a market failure lurking in credit markets that leads people to borrow beyond prudent levels, we should all just worry about our own financial situation.

The one exception to this rule is perhaps government fiscal policy. There is a suspiciously high correlation between the rise of foreign indebtedness and the rise in the Federal government budget deficit. It is in the nature of politics perhaps that our elected officials are tempted to provide us with what we want today and leave the bill for the future. Ideally, private actors would internalize the future tax liability that a government budget deficit represents-e.g., by increasing private saving today to meet these future obligations. The aggregate data suggest that this has not happened.

The messages so far are as follows. (1) Even in a perfectly open world economic system, some countries will run overall deficits and others will run overall surpluses. (2) We cannot look at deficits or surpluses to determine whether foreign markets are open. (3) There is nothing virtuous about balanced trade and nothing inherently wrong with deficits or surpluses. (4) What we must monitor is overall indebtedness and debt service in relation to the size of the economy.

If deficits don't imply trade barriers then what does?
Even though U.S. trade deficits are not a symptom of closed foreign markets, there are reasons to think that many countries protect certain sectors that particular U.S. firms might otherwise penetrate. The volume of trade is a poor indicator of trade barriers. Product prices are a much better indicator. The logic is simple. If a country erects a meaningful trade barrier, then we ought to find that prices for a given product are higher in that country. Trade barriers (whether overt or subtle) presumably keep out the most efficient suppliers or limit their access. This allows inefficient domestic producers into the market and increases prices.

High domestic prices are the legitimate smoking gun that signals protection of many markets in Japan. This fact has been documented in research by the U.S. Department of Commerce and MITI, Marcus Noland, myself, and others. Some contend that prices are higher in Japan due to high distribution costs, but some research has found that the problem is more than that alone. Therefore, I conclude that Japan does protect more of its domestic industries by a greater margin than most other advanced economies. Developing countries tend to have even more protection, but those barriers have fallen rapidly in recent years.

What would be the effect of reduced barriers to US exports?
Although foreign markets may be closed to varying degrees, the facts suggest that reductions in trade barriers in foreign markets would have a very limited effect on aggregate income and employment in the U.S. What macroeconomic effect would a more open Japanese market have on the U.S.? In 1997, Japan had a trade surplus of about $82 billion according to the IMF Direction of Trade Statistics. For sake of argument, let's imagine that the surplus would vanish if the Japanese market were open (even though that is an overstatement for reasons noted above). In 1997, the United States was responsible for 22.4% of all imports to Japan. If that share were maintained in the face of an $82 billion increase in Japanese imports, the U.S. would experience an $18.4 billion increase in its exports.

If we made the rather extreme assumption that this $18.4 billion increase in exports represented a pure increase in GDP, that would still only amount to a one-time gain in real GDP of 0.2%. If we assume that these exports obey the standard split between labor and capital income in GDP (2/3 labor and 1/3 capital), it would increase labor income by about $12 billion. If the average labor cost were $50,000 per worker, this would generate about 240,000 jobs. That is about the number of new jobs added in a typical month in the U.S. economy.

Furthermore, there are two reasons to think that this calculation exaggerates the true impact. First, if the U.S. economy were operating near capacity, an increase in demand from Japan would probably increase prices of U.S. goods, rather than output. At present, the U.S. labor market is very tight. So tight that the Fed now contemplates raising interest rates to squelch any sign of an increase in demand for fear it will be inflationary. Second, there is the fact that Japan's increased imports would need to be offset by a reduction in Japan's net lending to the rest of the world. Presumably, this would increase U.S. interest rates somewhat, which would reduce demand from other sources and reinforce the crowding out.

The same reasoning we have applied to the Japanese market applies to other foreign markets. In fact, the argument becomes stronger as cumulative export demand increases since the crowding out issue will surely become dominant at some point.