Fact Checker: Trump keeps claiming the trade deficit is going down. It’s not.
By Glenn Kessler Glenn Kessler The Fact Checker Email Bio Follow March 1 at 3:00 AM “You saw trade deficits went down last month and everyone’s trying to figure out why. Well, we’re taking a lot of tariff money. And it has reduced the trade deficit.” The president really, really, really wants trade deficits to decline. But reality keeps biting.
Nevertheless, the president keeps citing trade deficit figures, so we will have to keep fact-checking him. Indeed, the earlier report shows that the goods deficit decreased $6.7 billion, to $71.6 billion. But, as we have just shown, the deficit went up the next month — to what turns out to be a record high for the goods deficit. Actually, a better measure would be to compare November 2018 to November 2017. That shows the trade deficit increased year over year.
The GDP report also indicates that the goods deficits will widen to more than $900 billion, compared with $810 billion in 2017. This presumably will be a crushing blow to a president who spent the past year falsely claiming the United States “lost” $800 billion on trade. The Pinocchio Test The president keeps seizing on scraps of data — a month here or a quarter there — to falsely claim the trade deficit is being reduced. But over the course of the year, it kept growing. Attributing a small one-month shift to tariffs is especially silly.
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