https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/12\/17\/trump-said-his-tariffs-would-reduce-the-trade-deficit-and-bring-back-manufacturing-heres-what-the-data-show\/?itm_source=parsely-api<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“From January through September, the most recent month for which U.S. Census Bureau trade data are available, the U.S. imported $1 trillion more in goods than it exported. This is a $118 billion jump compared to the goods trade deficit that the U.S. ran from January to September 2024. (Likewise, the overall trade deficit, which includes services, increased by $113 billion.)<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Recently published data from China’s General Administration of Customs show the Chinese goods trade surplus has increased since Trump took office. From January to September, China exported $875 billion more goods than it imported\u2014a $185 billion jump vs. the same time period in 2024. <\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
Fortunately for consumers, these macroeconomic statistics are meaningless. You run a trade deficit with your grocery store, I run a trade deficit with McDonald’s, good little boys and girls run a trade deficit with Santa Claus, and we’re all better off for it. As as the economists Daniel Klein and Donald Boudreaux have put it, a trade deficit is equivalent to running a surplus on current stuff.<\/p>\n
Likewise, as countries get richer, their labor markets transition from agriculture to industry and then to the service sector. Declining manufacturing employment as a share of overall employment is a sign that Americans are richer, not poorer, than our ancestors.<\/p>\n
Trump’s targeted metrics are meaningless as proxies of prosperity. But the fact that his protectionist policies are failing to achieve their stated goals shows just how flawed they\u2014and their justifications\u2014always were.” <\/p>\n
https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/12\/17\/trump-said-his-tariffs-would-reduce-the-trade-deficit-and-bring-back-manufacturing-heres-what-the-data-show\/?itm_source=parsely-api<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[278,221,217,165,272,355,290,2259,377,208,141,226,227,170],"class_list":["post-20837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-deficit","tag-donald-trump","tag-economics","tag-economy","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-imports","tag-international-law","tag-manufacturing","tag-tariffs","tag-taxes","tag-trade","tag-trade-war","tag-trump"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20837"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20837\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20838,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20837\/revisions\/20838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}