Money spent on Chinese coffee makers and Middle East oil cannot be spent on  US-made goods and services, unless offset by exports.

When imports substantially exceed exports, Americans must consume much more than the incomes they earn producing goods and services, or the demand for what they make is inadequate to clear the shelves, inventories pile up, layoffs result, and the economy goes into recession.

From 2004 to 2008, the trade deficit exceeded five percent of GDP, and Americans borrowed from abroad to keep the economy going. To consume more than they produced, they posted as collateral overvalued homes financed on shaky mortgages. When mortgages and banks failed, home prices and retail sales tanked, the shortfall in demand for  US made goods and services drove up unemployment, further choked consumer and investment spending, and thrust the economy into the worst recession in 70 years.

Now huge federal stimulus spending is required to resuscitate business activity. However, as the economy recovers the trade deficit on oil and with China will grow, taxing demand for  US goods and services. Once that money is spent, demand for American products will fall, and the economy will be at risk of a second recession.

President Obama ignores the fundamental causes of trade deficit; consequently, his policies to fight the recession will deliver only a moderate recovery in 2010. Imports of oil and Chinese consumer goods will rise as the economy recovers. As stimulus spending runs out, the escalating trade deficit will push the economy down again and threatens a second recession—the feared “W” shaped recovery.

So far, the Obama Administration has not challenged Beijing’s most protectionist policies—large government purchases of  US dollars that drive down the exchange rate for the yuan, subsidize Chinese exports, and artificially elevate Chinese savings and suppress  US savings. The China- US savings imbalance is not entirely a natural phenomenon rooted in consumer behavior.

Industrial policies to promote green industries championed by President Obama will create jobs numbering in the thousands, and will hardly replace the millions lost to the trade deficit. Green jobs are not a realistic prescription to resolve what are macroeconomic and systemic problems—the overvalued dollar vis-à-vis the Chinese yuan and the inability of the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund to discipline and end China’s predatory currency and trade polices.

In 2010 the trade deficit is slicing $400 billion to $600 billion off GDP, and longer term, it reduces potential annual GDP growth to 3 percent from 4 percent.

Manufacturers are particularly hard hit by subsidized imports. Through recession and recovery, six million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000. Following the pattern of past economic expansions and business cycles, the manufacturing sector should have retained about three million of those jobs, especially given the very strong productivity growth accomplished in recent years.

The trade deficit is the single most important reason why the private sector has failed to add a single job since 1999.

Thanks to the record trade deficits accumulated over the last 10 years, the  US economy is about $1.5 trillion smaller. This comes to about $10,000 per worker.