re: CBS News: Is Trump Already Winning The Trade War With China?

quote:

---

largest three-month reduction in 10 years

---

so per the latest data point, we see one month back down where we were the month of the election?

and that datapoint is for May- while the steel/aluminum tariffs, and the retaliation all happened June 1 or later?

thred succ



i mean if THE goal was to eliminate the trade deficit, we could do it easily just by shutting down all trade. hopefully the apparent reduction here wasn't achieved by similar means- just a big reduction in overall volume traded.

it isn't clear which direction the ratio of imports/exports tends to change due to actions like those of this administration, although it's likely that the volume of both will decrease, usually leading to a deficit reduction by definition. but i think what Joe Protectionist would want specifically would be a sustained increase in bilateral exports, while bilateral imports are held steady or decrease gradually