Econofact
There’s no connection between bigger trade deficits and slower economic growth
Published:
President Donald Trump and members of his administration claim that international trade is rife with unfair dealing. As a sign of this unfairness they point to the fact that the U.S. buys more goods from many countries than these individual countries purchase from the United States, arguing that such bilateral trade deficits mean that the U.S. is being “ripped off.”
They claim that the country’s overall trade deficit — the sum of the U.S. trade balance with all countries — represents economic weakness and a national-security threat. But what can bilateral trade deficits and the country’s overall trade deficit tell us about trading relations and the health of the U.S. economy? Here are some facts:
This post was originally published on Market Watch
