In evaluating the effectiveness of our national trade policy, a look at our trade surpluses, or rather, deficits, provides a most telling answer. Our deficits for the past 16 years have crossed the six billion dollar mark, and the deficit with China alone accounted for almost half of it, at 270 billion. As our economists struggle to explain these staggering numbers, China has quietly accumulated in excess of two trillion dollars worth of foreign exchange reserves during the same period.

This imbalances of our trade deficit, along with the inherent disadvantages that our manufacturers and industries face owing to our labor and environmental policies, that is not being asked of their foreign competitors, are just some of the more pertinent issues that needs to be tackled by our presidential candidates before we even move to issues involving North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).