One-sided trade

People sometimes worry that we're buying stuff from the rest of the world, but the rest of the world isn't buying from us. I've tried explaining to people before, one person seemed to get it, others not so much. However, no matter my previous lack of oratory skill in this area, this possibility isn't a problem. We import from Japan, we get the car, they get the dollars. Now what? Either they spend the dollars on American goods, invest the money in America (or trade with someone who does one of these things), or the dollars never come back to America. In the first two cases it all balances out. In the last case, we've received a great windfall; we have the car and it only cost us some green pieces of paper, or maybe even only some 1's and 0's. Not exporting is a good thing if you can get away with it.