Many countries target the value of their currency, buying up dollars to keep their currency from rising against the dollar. This prevents normal market adjustment, as a country with a trade deficit would expect to see its currency fall in value, making its goods and services more competitive. China is the most visible and important currency “manager,” but there are many others.

These actions can be countered in at least three ways. First, we could pass legislation that gave the government the right to treat currency management as a violation of international trading rules, leading to offsetting tariffs.

We could also tax foreign holdings of United States Treasuries, making the usual tactic of currency managers more expensive. And we could institute reciprocity into the process of currency management: If a country wants to buy our Treasuries, we must be able to buy theirs (which is not always the case now).

The Obama administration, however, has not taken such measures, preferring instead to try to meet its goal of doubling exports by 2015. But there’s a key word missing from that formulation: “net.”

If you asked me how my basketball team did last night, and I told you, “Great — they scored 92 points!” you’d presumably want to know how many points the other team scored. Unless we’re targeting net exports, or exports minus imports, we’re not in the game.

The administration has other helpful measures in play, including tax credits to incentivize domestic production. But unless we’re willing to go after exchange rates — the value of our currency relative to that of our trading partners — we will not be able to significantly lower the trade deficit.

The impact of doing so would be striking. Suppose the reduction in the value of the dollar cut the trade deficit by two percentage points of G.D.P. This would directly create close to 2.8 million jobs, a disproportionate number of which would be relatively high-paying manufacturing jobs. And that’s not counting the fact that a factory job has a high multiplier effect, creating more work in other sectors to support it.