Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 April 1891 — EXPORTS AND IMPORTS. [ARTICLE]

EXPORTS AND IMPORTS.

A Damaging Admission—Exports Pay for Imports Balance of Trade and the Farmers* Market. The American Economist, the mouthpiece of the American Protective Tariff League, makes a fatal admission when it says: “Probably no economic law is mere rigid than that a nation’s imports must, in the long run, be- paid for by its exports. ” Very.true; but the Economist has for months been wrestling in agony to prove just the contrary. It has taken up the principle held by all opponents of protection, that we cannot sell abroad unless we will buy there—in other words, that exports pay for imports; end it has tried by various examples to prove that this is false. It could show that we sell to England about $200,000,000 a year more than we buy there. But it is well known that our excess of exports to England pay for our excess of imports from South America and other parts of the world. At present our total exports and imports are not far from being equal, some years our exports being larger and other years imports being in excess. Most of the years since the war, however, we have sent out more than we brought in from abroad —a fact which gives the protectionists exceeding great joy. When exports are greater than imports, the balance, they say, comes back to us in gold and silver. Thus this Economist said some time ago: “Since 1875 the balance of trade has been in our favor for every year except 1888 and 1889, and we have received back in fourteen years $1,581,926,871 of what we lost under free trade.” But the Economist could very easily verify this statement. The Treasury Department publishes the figures of exports and imports of gold and silver. If we have been receiving back gold and silver from Europe, the Treasury reports ought to show the fact. What do they show? That we have “received back” $205,000,000 since 1875, all told, and that in the same time we have sent abroad $277,000,000, all in gold and silver. During the very time when the Economist fancies that we have been receiving back gold and silver in payment for goods, we have sent away $72,000,000 more than we brought in. The explanation of this is simple enough. The $1,581,000,000 merchandise and $72,000,000 in gold and silver, a total of $1,653,000,000, which wo have sent abroad since 1875 over and above what came in, was sent in payment of interest on foreign investftaents in the United States, in taking up Government, State, and railroad bonds, in premiums oh insurance policies, and in paying freights to foreign vessels. But the Economist makes another admission. It says that “our imports of 800 or 900 millions annually are now largely paid for by agricultural exports.” From which it naturally follows that the more we import the greater will be the demand for our farm products to pay for those imports. Our farmers, therefore, have the highest possible interest in increasing our importations of foreign goods. Even if they should not need many of those imported goods themselves, the importation of them enlarges the foreign demand for wheat, flour, corn, beef, pork and other commodities produced by our farmers.