re: #5 Spocomptonite

What a great deal! We export entire mountainsides to Asia, Asia sends it back to the West Coast as air pollution.

Wait a minute, I don’t see any net benefit for us at any stage of this trade balance.

The benefit is that it reduces the trade deficit. The benefit is that extracting the coal and shipping it means jobs for thousands of Americans. China will get the coal from someplace, might as well be us.