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The U.S. government just released the first trade figures for this year, showing a whopping $43.1 billion deficit for January – an all-time high. More than a quarter of that was with China, whose trade deficit with the United States expanded to $11.5 billion. During the normally staid annual Senate hearing March 9 on trade policy, Republican members pushed Robert Zoellich, the U.S. trade representative, to be tougher on China. That’s what a lot of Democrats want, too. Think again.  

China and other Asian countries are saving a lot and spending relatively little. America, by contrast, saves almost nothing and buys a lot. In other words, we’re living high on the hog, way beyond our means. They’re living low on the hog, arguably way below theirs.  

If you hadn’t noticed, American consumers are deep in debt, and the American government is deep in debt. A large part of the reason we can keep binging is that China and other Asian nations continue to support our habit. They keep buying American assets and lending us money. For the last two years, for example, money flows from Asia into U.S. government securities covered two-thirds of the $650 billion growth in the public debt of the United States.  

It’s like a drunk who’s offered drink after drink by a teetotaler. Finished? Have another. You can’t stand up? Oh, that’s okay. Here, have another.  

Who’s to blame? Well, you could say that they’re to blame for giving us more and more booze. At least, that seems to be the way Washington wants to view it. In yesterday’s trade hearings on Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans alike criticized China for keeping its currency artificially low, which makes its exports cheaper. Treasury Secretary John Snow recently vowed to hold China’s “feet to the fire” to get it to raise its currency.  

But there’s another way to look at this. The reason China’s and other Asian currencies are low relative to the dollar is that these countries have been propping up the dollar by pouring so much money into America. If they stopped supporting our habit, we’d have to sober up.  

If they stopped sending us their money, the results would in fact be sobering. The value of the dollar would plummet, and long-term interest rates in America would soar. American consumers and the federal government would have no choice but to stop binging. We’d be in for a real shock.  

Problem is, there’s no 12-step program for a drunken nation like ours.  

Mr. Reich, former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, is professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis and the author of "Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America," out in May from Knopf