LAEDC releases International Trade Report

The Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. has released its annual International Trade Trends and Impacts report. As is usual for this otherwise reputable organization, they have lumped all imports and exports onto one category with frequent references to what that they call “the total value of two-way international trade”. It isn’t until the discussion of individual trade partners is there any mention at all about the huge trade deficits with these countries, and we can only assume that Los Angeles Ports must be shipping a huge number of empty shipping containers back to Asia. With China, for example, there is a regional trade deficit of 83 billion dollars- a nearly 5 to 1 import to export ratio with Southern California. In spite of this, the LAEDC did not even mention the stunning difference between imports and exports in their list of “challenges” facing the industry.