Nobody these days can live without China. Many—perhaps too many, particularly in Congress—cannot live with it either. Yesterday, National Public Radio reviewedA Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy. In it, journalist Sara Bongiorni chronicles how she and her family tried to live without buying anything shipped to the US from China.



You do not have to be Thomas Friedman to realize that these efforts quickly become futile showmanship. They make the book an entertaining read, but they also made me ask a question not many in Congress are willing to pursue: why on earth would we want to spend a year, or even a day, without “Made in China”?Nobody (these days) can live without their barber. Yet one rarely hears pulpit-pounding fulminations about the enormous bilateral trade deficit almost everyone in America Is running with their hair-care professionals.



Bilateral trade deficits do not matter economically; only overall trade deficits do (and those only up to a point). But politically, they seem to be all-important.Perhaps Congress could spend more time boning up on the basic lessons of economics—and explaining them to their constituents—than looking for excuses to ratchet up protectionism.