Donald Trump is admitting, or rather boasting, that when he accused Canada of running a huge trade surplus with the US, he was basically making it up. Who would ever have guessed he would be capable of such a thing?
In his latest tweet on the subject earlier today, Trump made the same claim. Commentators on CNN were aghast at his playing fast and loose with the facts. As they correctly pointed out, Canada has a surplus in goods trade with the US, but that is dwarfed by the very large surplus that the US enjoys in trade in services, so the overall trade balance favours the US.
Here's where I think the commentators are failing to connect the dots. Trump's voter base, to which his every tweet and speech is directed, is largely made up of the likes of steelworkers in Pennsylvania, coal miners in West Virginia, dairy farmers in Wisconsin: producers of goods. His base is largely devoid of service workers such as Wall Street bankers, or Hollywood entertainment types, or Massachusetts insurance agents.
In the types of products that keep bread on the tables of Trump's base -- goods -- the US is indeed running a deficit. That's the only trade they care about, so that's what he talks about. It's nowhere close to the whole picture, but it's not exactly wrong, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment