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

You get an A sonny

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Caps the largest three-month reduction in 10 years.

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Well we had record trade imbalances in the months before that, and our GDP actually grows when our imbalance grows from year to year.

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The U.S. trade imbalance with China in May totaled $43.1 billion, down from the $47.2 billion posted in March

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This article is just messing up all sorts of figures.

These figures he’s citing is referring to the TOTAL INTERNATIONAL trade imbalance.

U.S. International Trade in Goods and Services

I don’t see monthly data for services, but trade imbalance for goods with China actually got larger from $25.88 billion in March to $33.19 billion in May.

Trade in Goods with China

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The U.S. trade imbalance with China in May totaled $43.1 billion, down from the $47.2 billion posted in March; it's the smallest monthly deficit since October 2016 and caps the largest three-month reduction in 10 years

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Again not true.

In February of 2016 it was $45.7 billion and in April 2016 it was $38.2 billion a nearly $7.5 reduction, and it was actually an even larger reduction the month before with $37.4 billion. Now if he’s talking about February to May that may be correct, but he explocty states March to May.

And the data I’m looking at only goes back to 2016, let alone 10 years. This is one of the most factually inaccurate articles I’ve seen, especially since they’re easily verifiable facts.

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news people don't want to hear.

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Nope - wrong.

Fake News is the implied slant that is delivered with the "news" - they are very selective in what they report and HOW they report it.

When "forced" to deliver news that is good for Trump, they make as little noise about it as possible. "Forced" = required to report in order to maintain semblance of journalism. They don't follow good news up with panels discussing how wrong the 'other' side was in predicting different outcomes. They don't have panels discussing how great Trump is for this 'good news' - they report it as if it were a traffic jam on the intersection of I-10 and I-45 in Houston rush hour. They may have panels that discuss the downside of the good news if they can cobble one together that doesn't fall the smell test.

When they report news that is bad for Trump, they It always comes with headlines that take the worst possible slant on what it 'really means.' Rarely does the factual report of the 'bad news' fulfill the promise of the headline. There is an excitement in their voices as they report the 'bad news.' They then form panels to discuss it ad nauseam to further emphasis the worst possible implications of the 'bad news' making unsupportable assertions about the motivation of the Trump involvement.

You know all this - at least if you have the logical capacity of a bed bug.

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largest three-month reduction in 10 years

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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