The Trade Imbalance and Energy
April 24th, 2008
Month after month we are shipping billions of dollars abroad to pay for oil, much of which is going to countries who are just steps from being enemies.
We all know that using less gas means spending less at the pump and cleaner air, but it is also a major factor in our trade deficit. About 45% of the oil we use is imported.
It’s certain that the tidal waves of cheap products from China, etc. are undermining our economy (Wal-Mart is by far the largest single importer from China), but we also getting heavily slammed by energy imports.
What can we do? Right this minute, there are little things can help save gas, like making sure tires are properly full and for couples, letting the person with the farthest commute take the most fuel efficient vehicle. In the longer run, consider more efficient cars. I have really put my Ford Escape Hybrid to the test and I love it. About 32 miles to the gallon when driving normally, and over 34 when I let up on the pedal a bit. Also, not a single quality problem with it.
With GM’s recent hybrid market entries, there are now lots of them are that are not micro-cars.
From a government policy perspective, we have to push them to stop focusing on the oil industry’s perspective. For example, continuing to fill the strategic oil reserve while oil prices are this high is either moronic or simply welfare for Exxon.
Pushing for home grown (American produced) biofuel production will also reduce our risk while keeping the dollars here at home. These recent articles claiming that biofuels are raising food prices are simply ignoring the market manipulation by the hedge funds – all commodity pricing is up, and most with nothing to do with biofuels, like gold or rice. If rice’s price, which is not used as a biofuel, can rise much more sharply than corn, in spite of an overabundance being grown, what does that mean? It means that the hedge funds have a lot more to do with pushing up prices than true demand or biofuel production.
To be smart with energy is to be pro-American.
Todd Lipscomb
Founder of www.MadeinUSAForever.com
Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 9:50 pmand is filed under Uncategorized, Trade Issues.
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I am happy to see that E-85 was NOT spoken of as a fuel.
Fact if you have a car that will run E-85 do not be fooled by the lower price of the fuel. Yes it is a Made in the U.S.A. product but it needs to be at least 26.5% cheaper to make econimic sence to use it. That is the amount of less fuel efficency that E-85 gives. In other words you will use more E-85 fuel to go the same distance. There are better fuels in the lab and one that has been known since 1916 that does not require the user to purchase a new car to use it, it can be made from all the same things and more as ethanol, it blends better with and can completely replace gasoline. It is called Butanol (Buytl Alcohol) and to anyone that says that it is not economically viable to produce it, I say that with all the money spent on importing crude we could have allready built the production units for it. (What part of hundreds of billions of dollars not bening spent in this country do you not understand?)
All the “auto makers” (and the new government standard of 35MPG by 2012) [note that the Hybrid mentioned above does not even meet this poor standard.]are not going to fix the problem. Untill we demand more from them the problem will still be there. You really want more efficient cars? Then stop rewarding (by buying them) the car makers for producing fuel hogs.
Tell the Department of Energy to go to a science class insted of a economics class.
True a Hybrid gets better MPG around town but at what price? What happens in 3-5 years when the batteries need replaced? Trade it in so that some shister used car dealer can pawn it off to an uninformed buyer? The truth is that all the “auto makers” spend more on advertising than every other industry combined. If they were to spend that on R&D then, I wonder how many MPGs we could get? Fact the curent gasoline engine is only effectively using, at best, 30% of the available energy in a gallon of the fuel. Where is the logic in using a fuel with less avaliable energy (E-85) in an engine that only uses 30% at best of the energy? Why not spend some if not all of the $700+ billion in the “bail out” on production facilities and on turning land that is otherwise not being used into fuel crop land? I bet that a lot of the unemployed people would be happy to have a job growing fuel crops.
The tech is out there and the cost is not too great for most of it, the true cost that is too great is the cost of not doing it! Start demanding results from the public servants insted of being affraid of them and trying to follow their rules to avoid trouble, because in many cases it is their rules that created the problem insted of solving it.