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Why are the protectionists bashing China over the supposed manipulation of its currency, as though that were responsible for our trade deficit with them (and as though a trade deficit were necessarily a bad thing)? We import more from Canada than we do with China, and we have a trade deficit there, too. Is that Canadian dollar "manipulated"? Same with Mexico. Germany. France. The United Kingdom. You have to go down the list of our trading partners all the way to the Netherlands, before you find a country with whom we have a trade surplus. Are they all "manipulating" their currencies? And doesn't the Netherlands have the same currency as Germany and France -- the Euro? So how come, of currency determines everthing, we have a deficit in two cases and a surplus in the other?

Could it just be that currency exchange rates in and of themselves have nothing to do with any of this?

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