“And I had a record trade deficit with Amazon last year. I bought thousands of dollars of stuff from them, and they didn’t buy anything from me. Big deal.”
Libertarians. Can’t tell the difference between individuals & microeconomics, and nations & macroeconomics.
Goes hand in hand with the maxim “you can charge libertarians with nationalism but they’ll never be convicted”.
The difference is microeconomics are reality while macroeconomics are political voodoo used to justify a panoply of bad ideas that have plagued us over the years.
Such as the idea that it is somehow a bad thing that our economy has strengthened under Trump, putting more money in our pockets so we can buy more stuff and consequently increase our “trade deficit” with China. Because some people have an inexplicable obsession with seeing us export more than we import, as though that is somehow the definition of prosperity.
I suppose a “nationalist” will tell me nations like Nigeria and Papua New Guinea are “winning,” because they always run trade surpluses. No thanks.
The trade imbalance is not sovereign. The trade imbalance results from American individuals and companies buying more from China than they sell. It is not the result of the US government trading with the chinese government.
The word worst was used. Actually, largest or greatest is the proper term. The trade imbalance with china is an indicator that Americans like to import and buy Chinese. The imbalance thus is not good or bad, not best or worst.
President Trump has several lines of attack in progress. His primary route of attack will apparently reduce the imbalance by increasing American sales (and thus American jobs) rather than decreasing Chinese sales.
In the event china resists, there will be punishment in the form of tariffs which are taxes on Americans purchasing chinese goods. The tariffs must be great enough to cause purchase to be from american vendors or other foreign vendors.
The loss of business must be great enough to china companies to force the government to change their ways.