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Here’s a letter to a Chinese news agency:

Editor, English.Xinhuanet.com

Dear Editor:

I want to jab a chopstick into my eye when I read that “China is willing to work with the United States on the imbalance of bilateral trade through communication and cooperation” (“China, U.S. need cooperation to solve trade imbalance: Chinese minister,” Jan. 20).

There is nothing to work on. There’s no meaningful “imbalance” requiring a “solution.” Rather than signaling a problem, a bilateral trade “imbalance” is as predictable as finding fish in the ocean. Indeed, in this world of nearly 200 countries – and in which money can be invested as well as spent buying exports – it would be beyond freakishly odd if, month after month, the Chinese were to purchase exactly as many exports from America as Americans purchase from China.

I challenge anyone to find in any respected international-economics textbook or scholarly economics-journal article even the remotest hint that, in a world of multiple countries, trade between any two of them should be “balanced.”

Sincerely,

Donald J. Boudreaux