re: I love how everyone is suddenly an economist when it comes to tariffs

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not talking about china.

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Unfortunately, everything globally is about China right now.
Venezuela
Cuba
Canada
Greenland
Iran
Russia
EU
Korea
Japan
India
Taiwan


If we aren't talking about China, then both of our heads are in the sand.

The Trump administration is trying to deter an oncoming war.
He's trying to do to China what Biden failed to do to Russia.

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ok. then that plant in asia stays and the american company continues with overseas manufacturing. but now the product costs them more.

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Until a domestic competitor steps in.

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Trade deficits matter.
In the decades since Perot warned about the "great sucking sound," our trade deficits ballooned. We converted from a balanced economy to a "service" economy. Our fall away from manufacturing, aka the transition to consumer spending over industrial production, is one of the most significant structural changes in modern history.

With AI impacts looming, employment in the service industry could well get destroyed. Hence the sovereignty issue.

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Trade deficits matter.

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That depends entirely on the product. They’re not inherently “good” or “bad”.

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They are inherently destabilizing.

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Economists don't even agree that that is the case.

But more to the point, are you aware that the tariffs aren't moving the needle with regard to trade deficits, if that is your justification for having them?

The numbers just came in for 2025. Our goods deficit widened under the tariffs to a record high $1.24T.

The overall deficit went from $904B in 2024 to $901B in 2025. $3B movement out of over $900B total is essentially flat.

Now the deficit with China fell significantly, but it just got shifted to Taiwan and Vietnam.

I'm sympathetic to the argument that we shouldn't be dependent on China for certain products that affect national security, but there are other ways of ensuring availability of those products (and that's not the argument you're making anyway).

I don't mind punishing China either—China is assho, after all—but getting too pissy with China could motivate their decoupling from the dollar, which would not be good for the US in the medium to long term.

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The numbers just came in for 2025. Our goods deficit widened under the tariffs to a record high $1.24T.

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How much of that was Q1 where all of the imports were pushed into the country to avoid tariffs? Can you break imports down by quarter?

Im not picking on you. Just that the dataset "2025" is a little misleading for trending data.

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Who doesn’t love strangers struggling to run their small businesses, right?

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Joe and the lost potatoes did more to destroy small business during his disastrous administration than tariffs could ever do.

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But more to the point, are you aware that the tariffs aren't moving the needle with regard to trade deficits

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That is not true, at all. But it is what Rachael Maddow will tell you.

Let's take a look at underlying facts.

Through May of this year, the trade deficit was 47% larger compared to the same period in 2024. The 47% was artificially driven by a massive import surge in Q1 attempting to front-run anticipated tariffs. Though it increased the 2025 numbers, it's actually antithetical to the point you're trying to make.

Similarly, to close the year, gold traders worried that Trump plans to extend tariffs to gold. So they rushed to import bullion into the US (particularly into New York vaults) before tariffs could take effect. As with the Q1 front-running, it distorted the trade figures significantly.

Tariffs are actually doing exactly what they are supposed to do.

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Do you have an example of how trade deficits are destabilizing to the American economy (i presume that you are referencing strength of dollar) since the US left the gold standard.

I see trade deficits as a non-issue based on performance based evidence of the American economy since dropping the gold standard. But im in good faith willing to listen to your argument.

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Right.
To simplify this some, under the pre-FDR gold specie standard, trade deficits were abject anathema. They resulted in shedding of domestic gold, meaning there was less domestic gold to pay for goods, services, and salaries in the US.

Trade deficits, along with increased population and productivity were immediately deflationary. Workers were paid less each year for identical production. Not good for the collective workspace psyche.

A switch from specie to fiat does not change the 19th century trade deficit dynamic as long as the fiat pool is fixed. However, those effects can be masked if the currency pool is expanded. Of course, expansion entails devaluation. Devaluation is inflationary.

Persistent trade deficits indicate a country is consuming more than it produces, and paying for the difference by selling assets or accumulating debt to foreigners. Over time, this reduces productive capacity of the domestic economy while transferring wealth abroad — a slow-motion liquidation of national economic strength.

Deficits must be financed. Trade deficits are no different. A country running chronic deficits does so by borrowing from abroad or selling off domestic assets — factories, real estate, financial instruments, even sovereign debt. This creates a compounding foreign liability position. As those liabilities grow, the country becomes increasingly dependent on the continued willingness of foreign creditors and investors to roll over that debt, all while we edge toward fiscal dominance.

Meanwhile, be they ether Chicken-or-Egg, trade deficits represent a structural loss of productive capacity that is difficult to reverse. Skills atrophy, supply chains dissolve, and industrial communities' muscle memory dissipates.

Countries running into severe economic destabilization almost universially preceed instability with huge trade deficits.

Those are some of the issues.

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So, are we now comparing the strength of the dollar to the countries that we have historically had the largest deficits to?

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Dollars are the reserve by which each of those compare themselves to. The RMB is manipulated.

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A switch from specie to fiat does not change the the 19th century trade deficit dynamic as long as the fiat pool is fixed.

That's one hell of an assumption.

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It is not an assumption at all. It's fact.
Perhaps you misread it?

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For now we can print money with near impunity (for now).

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Correct. That's the whole rationale for fiat.

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Devaluation is inflationary.
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It's deflationary *if* demand for the currency is fixed and satiated. Neither of which are true as of today.

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Is demand for a currency ever "fixed and satiated" other than in theory?

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The only way to reverse that is with a drastic drop to our standard of living

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Now, as you put it, THAT's one hell of an assumption. And clearly false.