I’m reading Hazlitt’s book Economics in One Lesson, and I’ve come across the concept that our imports provide foreigners with dollars to use to buy our exports, and that there’s almost an equilibrium there when you have free trade policies. But couldn’t foreigners just exchange their native currency for dollars? How is it that our imports are the only thing that makes our exports possible?
Is that still true in the age of central banks, where money is created out of thin air?
Perhaps I’m missing something fundamental.
