“The term “trade deficit” is deceptive, because it’s not a deficit at all, any more than my fiscal relationship with the grocery store is.”
Your analysis is terribly flawed. First of all, the grocery store isn’t accumulating wealth and buying weaponry with it that it may one day use against you. The grocery store doesn’t have ideological differences with you that it will press at every turn. The grocery store doesn’t employ people doing jobs, to the exclusion of those in your household.
There is more to the equation, does our GDP support the trade deficit, in a similar manner to your household income supporting your grocery shopping. If the GDP doesn’t support the deficit, bad things can happen, just as if you use your credit card for groceries and don’t have the cash to back it up, you won’t like the result.
No, it's not.
First of all, the grocery store isn’t accumulating wealth and buying weaponry with it that it may one day use against you.
Should gun manufacturers stop selling in the state of New York? After all, those gun sales are taxed and those tax revenues fund the attorneys who file lawsuits against gun manufacturers. That's not a potential harm, but a direct one. According to your way of thinking, they should stop selling guns in states that sue gun manufacturers, since they're helping fund their own demise.
The fact is, the lawsuits would happen anyway. Similarly, what China does or does not do militarily will happen anyway. Lots of other nations trade with China, and they have a lot going on internally as well.
The only stupid thing the US has done with China militarily was to give them advanced technology. (Thanks to the treasonous Clinton gang.)
In fact, our trade with China will tend to discourage them from attacking us. You just don't attack a good customer, since doing so would cut off that income.
The grocery store doesn’t have ideological differences with you that it will press at every turn.
Are you sure about that? And what if it did? How are China's ideological differences an economic harm to the US?
They aren't.
The grocery store doesn’t employ people doing jobs, to the exclusion of those in your household.
Not my household personally, but certainly to the exclusion of those in someone's household. Should the households of those who can't get a job at the grocery store stop buying groceries there?
There is more to the equation, does our GDP support the trade deficit, in a similar manner to your household income supporting your grocery shopping. If the GDP doesn’t support the deficit, bad things can happen, just as if you use your credit card for groceries and don’t have the cash to back it up, you won’t like the result.
You're illustrating the problem with the word "deficit" very well here.
When we talk about a budget deficit, then there is a debt involved. When we talk about a trade deficit, there is do debt. We don't owe China money because we have a trade "deficit" with them. The "deficit" is in the balance between what we buy and what we sell. We don't owe them money.
Comparing a negative trade "deficit" with buying groceries on credit is inaccurate. I have a negative trade "deficit" already with my grocery store, because I only buy there. I don't sell them anything.
On the other hand, my employer has a negative trade "deficit" with me. They buy my labor and knowledge, but I don't buy anything from them.
But in both cases, there is no debt involved. I don't owe money to the grocery store, and my employer doesn't owe money to me.