Germany balances budget for the first time in 38 years

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by Skybird

If that is not absurd: you produce expensive items for foreigners in other countries, and from other countries you get the same items (that you could produce yourself as well) - often in lower quality - in their cheaper versions. That is lack of logic at it's best. national industries should be focussing on serving the local national demand first before serving the demands of international customers. wpudl save us a lot of traffic and energy wasting and pollution. t reminds of Iriosh farmers who keep sheep - but eat sheep from NZ because irish sheep are more expensive and get exported, while NZ sheep are the ones they could afford to eat themselves. that is artificial madness.

It's quite difficult to address this without making trade worthless for both sides. Goods will follow demand and pricing, be it abroad or domestic.
Globalisation has it's good and bad sides, one of which is that it's very hard for governments to control where domestic goods go, and any controls can be legally fought through free trade laws and common markets.
Example - there's plenty of food grown here that gets exported, and we eat vegetable flown from Cyprus. Most consumers will follow prices rather than nationalities, and it's almost impossible to effectively switch demand without artificially messing with prices, or changing the quality of the product.

I'm in agreement with you regarding pollution.