it is my pleasure to revamp our speaker, ian fletcher. senior economist of the coalition for a prosperous america, a nationwide grassroots organization 2.5 million numbers dedicated to fixing trade policies and comprising representatives to agriculture and labor. he was previously research fellow at the u.s. business and industry council of the washington think tank founded in 1933 and before that, an economist and private part is hedge funds and private equity firms. educated at columbia university in university of chicago, he lives in san francisco. ian fletcher regularly writes a lot posts about online publications. his blogs can be read at the "huffington post" world net daily. his most recent book, free trade does not work published in 2011 and is available for purchase here tonight. mr. fletcher will autograph copies. what scares a warm welcome to the san franciscan, ian fletcher. [applause] >> high. i'd like to begin by pointing out to everybody but america's trade deficit is $500 billion.3 trade deficit is $500 billion. the reason

let's give a warm welcome to ian fletcher.[applause] >> hi, i'd like to begin by pointing out to everybody that america's eis$500 billion a year. start with that fact to make it crystal clear that if we got a trade problem in the country, that is to say trade relations with the rest of the world or not in good order, it's a big problem, not a little problem. it's not an obscure little thing. we've all been sitting through weeks, if not months of discussion of the so-called fiscal cliff, and look how much money is involved there, this is a comparable amount of money. people have been worried that the fiscal cliff would result in huge amounts of aggregate demand as economists calling taken out of the economy. well, thanks to the trade deficit, we're looking at a comparable amount of money taken out every year regardless of what happens, and it's been going on for years and years and years. now, some people can't understand what the trade deficit is, some will, but the trade deficit is the difference between what america exports