The CBPP writer assumes a correlation between forex rates and trade deficits. This is an inaccurate reading of financial history, which I'm old enough to remember. The $ cratered as I hitchhiked across Europe in the summer and autumn of 1973, while the US went into trade surplus.
Unemployment dropped as growth and productivity boomed along with a rising $ in the 1990s after Clinton faced down the bond vigilantes in 1993. Another $-trade deficit uncorrelated moment came as the housing bubble burst and the GFC exploded in 2007-09. The euro peaked in 2008 at $1.59/euro and the trade deficit as % of GDP cratered by half in the 2007-09 recession as the $ rose from that trough. https://www.statista.com/chart/9728/us-trade-balance/
With unemployment at a 50 year low of 3.5% the trade deficit is as high as ever.
https://www.bea.gov/system/files/trans122-chart-01.png.
Here's the 50 year $ exchange rate chart if you don't trust this old man's forex memory:
https://www.bourbonfm.com/sites/default/files/users/PatrickBourbon/JPM.jpg
Basic multivariant analysis tells us that many things drive employment besides trade deficits and forex rates: real interest rates, cost of capital, FDI and speculative capital flows due to Asian trade partners offering low returns to domestic savers....
The buybacks are bad camp due to distorted incentives driving financial engineering includes Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergeorgescu/2020/05/13/stock-buybacks-are-banned-let-it-be-a-trend/?sh=39f0bdc86530
I'm in a low enough tax bracket to prefer dividends, especially the safest one because it's just been raised.
