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162 points TaurenHunter | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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gniv ◴[] No.43580059[source]
When they talk about trade deficits do they take into account tourism and other cross-border services?

Or is it just goods, and in that case why focus on goods?

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LatteLazy ◴[] No.43580106[source]
Generally they are just goods.

It’s much easier to measure physical goods crossing customs. It’s very difficult to measure whether that guy in your restaurant was a tourist or not. And that’s the simple case believe it or not…

This is one of the reasons service oriented economies seem to run huge deficits…

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1. nosianu ◴[] No.43580191[source]
I software and IT services (cloud) etc. "goods" or not here? As far as I know that very large sector is not included in that calculation. A follow up question is how US company subsidiaries located in Europe are counted - the gains all end up in the US eventually (or at the very least the money streams are under US control), but it does not count as a US export? I have sooo many questions.

Everything is Microsoft and Co. in Europe and elsewhere, both the OS and things like AWS or Office 365 subscriptions.