Now, I'm no expert, but it sounds like you're confusing debts. The $8 trillion figure is based on
budget deficits of the federal government. Technically, the federal government owes that to the American people, not some other nation or group of nations. The
trade deficit however, is a measure of how much the US imports vs. what it exports. We're increasingly a consumer nation and don't produce much. We buy Japanese, Korean, and European cars; Japanese electronics; all kinds of stuff from Hong Kong; clothes from India, Pakistan, and all sorts of other places.
This past weekend, I made a trip to Pittsburgh; formerly a big steel producing city. Hence the NFL team name, Steelers. There's a church downtown that got blackened from all of the air pollutants. Back in the day, folks in Pittsburgh were 4-5x more likely to die of some sort of respiratory illness than folks anywhere else in the country. But Pittsburgh is a nice, clean city now. Why? All the steel mills are gone. Industry and manufacturing have been on decline in this country for some time now. Many jobs have been shifted out of the country to keep costs down. We've gotten ourselves into quite a pickle.
The conversion to Euros will probably force the US to annex Mexico and Canada!
