What a crock! You can borrow money on a gold standard, just like you can borrow money on a fiat standard. And you can run up trade balances using either if you have stupid trade policies.
It's worth noting though that our import tariffs are at historic lows. Perhaps if we raised our import tariffs and became a little more self reliant and put our people back to work. We wouldn't have such huge trade deficits.
As mentioned yesterday, this is false. In a gold-standard, the supply of money is limited. Yes, Gov'ts can borrow , but they will pay an immediate cost in terms of interest rates, and the effect on the whole economy. There is NO WAY in a true hard currency system the Gov't could run $1 Trillion deficits year after year, like we have now - with money printed by the FED.