From today's Wall Street Journal (U.S.-China Detente Won't Fix Everything"): "In the 12-month period ended in November 2019, the U.S. deficit with China was $56 billion lower than in the like period ended in November 2018...But the deficit with the rest of the world rose $49 billion, offsetting nearly 90% of that drop. The overall U.S. goods deficit fell only $7 billion, and much of this was due to a falling bill from net oil imports."
This graph tells a whole story in and of itself. What's happened to our trade deficit since trump became president? What's happened to our deficit with China? If you push one side of the balloon, the other side responds. This all appears to be one big shell game. What is most notable is where the trade deficit was at the end of 2016, when trump became president, and where the deficit is now. Clearly, our trade deficit peaked in 2012, but then it went down and stabilized.
I'm sick and tired of the political wrangling and spinning. I'm a numbers guy. I like data. And, I like to understand the data that I use to evaluate situations. Today's WSJ article was pretty telling. Our trade deficit definitely hasn't gone down. The games that we've been playing with China haven't had an impact. Even if there's an impact on China, this data suggests that probably doesn't mean anything for our worldwide trade situation. We're getting our strings pulled by all of the politicians when it comes to this stuff. Be careful what they tell us, unfortunately, starting with the president.
No comments:
Post a Comment