Richard M. Ebeling: Trade deficits don’t matter – unless caused by government

  In 2016, the United States exported goods and services equal to $2.209 trillion, and imported goods and services with a market value of $2.712 trillion. The balance of trade deficit for 2016, therefore, came to $502.3 billion. The trade deficit represented a little over 10 percent of the over $4.92 trillion of total trade in goods and services between America and the rest of the world. And was only about 2.7 percent of the entire $18.56 trillion Gross Domestic Product of the United States in 2016.

  But listening to the rhetoric coming from Donald Trump and others in his administration, it would be easy to assume that America’s balance of trade deficit is causing market misery and economic harm to the people of the United States.

Jacob G. Hornberger: Trade-deficit nonsense

  Do you ever wish that the federal government would stop publishing data on the so-called trade deficit? It would be one of the best things the government could ever do. At the very least, it would bring an end to the nonsensical obsessiveness over the trade deficit that characterizes so many mainstream economists.