Trump's Trade Deficit Obsession

My previous attempts atasking a Trump trade adviser directly about trade policy failed. I ’m now going to try another approach: Interpreting something surprising two other Trump advisers said.Here ’s what Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarrowrote recently:The saddest fact here is that Hillary Clinton doesn ’t know the difference between a good trade deal and a bad one. Exhibit A is the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR).In her economic speech in Detroit, Clinton bragged that she voted against the one multilateral trade deal that came before the Senate while she was there. That was indeed CAFTA-DR, a multilateral deal involving the U.S. along with Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.Here ’s what Clinton did not confess to: She was wrong to oppose CAFTA-DR. In 2014, we had a favorable trade in goods balance with the CAFTA-DR countries of $2.7 billion. By 2015, that jumped to $5 billion. This pattern continued in the first half of 2016 with a surplus of $2.4 billion.Did you catch that?  Trump’s trade advisers are praising a U.S. trade agreement.  That doesn’t sound very Trump-like, as Trump has been saying NAFTA is a “disaster” and has been calling the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) the “rape” of our country.  So why do they like the CAFTA-DR?  Because in 2014 (9 years after the deal went into effect), there was a U.S. surplus in trade in goods with the various members of CAFTA-DR.  That by itself...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs