Saving: A Little Brush Fire?

While we have been arguing the last few weeks about tariffs, saving, and trade deficits, the Congressional Budget Office was preparing its Budget and Economic Outlook 2018 to 2028 (www.cbo.gov). It might not seem obvious how the CBO’s work relates to our tariff spat, so I decided to spend a perfectly nice Sunday morning tying the two together. The main idea is that our trade deficits have very little to do with cheating and everything to do with national saving. National saving has a lot to do with government deficits. 

Some of you don’t like the convoluted explanation that insufficient domestic saving (over-consumption) draws in foreign saving, raises the value of the dollar, and creates a (larger) trade deficit. It sounds much too theoretical. And you don’t see how Americans who love their lattes and other luxuries could ever behave like folks in other countries who actually try to balance their budgets.

But that’s all recorded in the past few weeks of blogs. If that hammer wasn’t big enough, I now want to bring the CBO’s latest sledgehammer into the project. Some of you are old enough to remember the world as it was in 2007 before the global recession slapped us around. In those good old days, a cup of coffee cost 20 cents and tasted like tea and most of us drank water from a tap in a thing called a glass. In 2007, the US budget deficit was $161 billion and the net national debt was $5 trillion.

Let’s back up. A government deficit is a one-year measure. In 2007, the government spent about $2.7 trillion, collected revenue of about $2.6 trillion, and sold government bonds to the public totaling $161 billion. Yes, when the government spends more than it collects in tax revenue it must borrow the difference. The $161 billion of 2007 was pretty typical of US government borrowing between 1999 and 2007 though it oscillated from year to year and hit a high of around $400 billion during one of those years.

The government borrows mostly from US savers. Borrowing $200 billion or so per year did not put too much stress on US saving. But imagine what happens when the borrowing rises from $161 billion in 2007 to $1.4 trillion in 2009. You are correct. That’s a 10-fold increase. If households and business firms are trying to borrow from savers at the same time, you can imagine how domestic saving might be insufficient or at least less sufficient to cover the borrowing. In such cases foreigners make up the difference. They bring their savings from countries around the world to the USA.

But wasn’t that $1.4 trillion government deficit a one-time thing? We had a huge and scary recession, and our government did what it was supposed to do to generate more spending in the economy – tax less and spend more. That’s true. And all looked pretty good as government deficits began to get smaller. Then along came two events: the Tax Reform of 2017 and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. Between these two waves of the magic wand, we took the budget deficit from $665 billion in 2017 to $1 trillion in 2020 and $1.5 trillion in 2028.

John Maynard Keynes thought the government should use a deficit in short-term situations with the intent of stimulating output. The fiscal dividend of the rising output would be a surge in tax revenues and a decline in government spending. Viola – a temporary deficit then vanishes into thin air. Keynes would be scratching his head about how nearly a decade after the recession started we are still stoking the fires with larger and larger deficits.

What sorts of things are wrong with this situation besides causing Keynes to roll over in his casket? First, the government is gobbling up our saving in the USA and sucking even more in from abroad. This makes it harder for US firms to borrow, to expand, modernize, and otherwise raise productivity. Economists call this “crowding out” of investment spending. Second, these government deficits that reduce available saving raise the value of the dollar and hurt our trade balance.

Third, these government deficits accumulate. If the US borrows $500 billion one year and another $1 trillion the next, then in those two years it has added $1.5 trillion to the national debt. The US net national debt was about $5 trillion in 2007. By 2017 it tripled to just under $15 trillion. The CBO says it will rise to $29 trillion by 2028. What a ride! In 2007 the net debt was 35% of the national economy. By 2017 it rose to 77%, and by 2028 it will be closing in on 100% of the economy.

Keep in mind that these forecasts extrapolate from current law only. It is possible to imagine this government raising spending (or lowering tax rates) even more during the next 10 years. It is also a sure thing that the US will encounter another recession before 2028. Either of those eventualities will cause the deficits to bleed even more and the national debt to be taller than a giant beanstalk. 

Need I say more? Between households, firms, and our lovely government, we are spending our brains out and the impact is to lower national productivity and competitiveness. We have too little business spending on capital and a corresponding trade deficit. Are we sure we don’t want to tend to this brush fire? Whether it is the government or the consumer, can we not find a way to restore more balance between revenue and spending? I guess we can always start over after the fire ravages our nation.