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Video: Watchdog.org News Update 7-16-15

By   /   July 16, 2012  /   1 Comment

Here’s a look at the headlines from Watchdog.org for July 16, 2012.


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Ben Yount

  • Daniel J. Kutscher

    “But it may not be that simple.” says PolitiFact.

    “Trade balances are affected not only by wages, tariffs and the demands of consumers, but also by events beyond the recession such as currency corrections and the value of the dollar. Considering recent currency corrections, annual trade deficits could stay in the range of $500 billion, said William Cline, a senior fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. That would make Brown’s $2 billion-a-day figure somewhat high.

    “It’s a bit of an outdated figure,” Cline said..

    Yet there’s another way of viewing the data. Figures from the Commerce Department that we reviewed originated from the U.S. Census Bureau’s economic analysis unit (a bureau within a bureau at Commerce). The figures are the government’s official measure of the trade balance, used by the White House, cited in the news media and accepted broadly by economists.

    Yet the U.S. International Trade Commission, or ITC, which polices trade matters in the United States, maintains separate data that is used to review tariffs and trade practices. Depending on how one chooses to sort the data, a higher trade deficit can result. Brown’s office told us that his data came from the ITC.

    So we, too, turned to the ITC, and its staff helped guide us in using its online database. The ITC cautioned that the official figures come from Commerce, but various trade professionals use ITC data to drill down further for other purposes.

    We drilled. The result: A much higher trade deficit — as high as $500.9 billion last year, in the depths of the recession, and $800 billion — averaging $2.19 billion a day — for 2008.”

    Here’s the link for those who want to read the actual story rather taking the word of Ohio Watchdog which cites no reference sources for it’s stoery or it’s funding. http://goo.gl/3JhBS