Outsourcing and imports benefits the countries doing the consuming

  People in the first world are wealthier today, than they ever had been prior to outsourcing and trade deficits. Goods and services are stacked high through out department stores and supermarkets. There are more food available all around the year because it is shipped from third world countries. The trade deficit means, that the first world does not produce anything to pay for the goods that first world countries consume from third world countries.

 There is a very large disparity in wealth between countries that post trade deficits versus those that post trade surpluses. And this is because more goods and services get shipped to the first world, than it does to the third.


"Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports".

Milton Friedman 1980