US Trade Deficits - Economic Theory Works

Trump Vowed to Shrink the Trade Gap. It Keeps Growing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/05/us/politics/us-trade-deficit.html

Prediction: Expansionary fiscal policy will widen the trade deficit

https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2016/11/repeat-of-1980s.html

https://vivekjayakumar.blogspot.com/2018/08/return-of-twin-deficits.html

Prediction comes true: US posts a record trade deficit in 2018

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trump-promised-to-shrink-the-trade-deficit-instead-it-exploded/2019/03/05/35d3b1e0-3f8f-11e9-a0d3-1210e58a94cf_story.html

US Budget Deficit Explodes
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-05/u-s-budget-deficit-widens-77-percent-as-revenue-declines

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman points out an obvious fact:

“The reason America runs persistent trade deficits isn’t that we’ve given away too much in trade deals, it’s that we have low savings compared with other countries.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/opinion/trump-deficit.html

NYT notes –
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/us/politics/us-trade-deficit.html

“Mr. Trump views the trade deficit with China as a sort of economic scorecard for which country is on top. Most economists disagree with this perspective, viewing trade deficits as neither a sign of economic strength nor weakness, but a function of macroeconomic factors like investment flows, fluctuations in the value of currency and relative growth rates.”