U.S. Trade Deficit Soars To Record

It would be nice to have a second party.

Neither Donald Trump or Joe Biden has shown any appetite for seriously moving away from the status quo of global free trade.

CNBC:

“The U.S. trade deficit hit a fresh record high in March as consumers flush with government cash spurred a continuing demand for foreign-made goods.

With a new round of $1,400 stimulus checks pouring in and the domestic economy continuing to show substantial improvement, the imbalance in goods and services with the rest of the world swelled to $74.4 billion, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday.

That’s the highest level ever in a data series that goes back to January 1992, and represents a 57.6% increase from the same period a year ago and higher than the $70.5 billion in February. …”

FOX Business:

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit surged to a record $74.4 billion in March as an improving U.S. economy drove purchases of imported foreign goods. …

The politically sensitive trade deficit with China rose 11.6% to $27.7 billion which, as usual, was the largest deficit with any single country.

Through the first three months of this year, the U.S. trade deficit totals $212.8 billion, up 64.2% from the deficit during the same period last year, a time when the U.S. economy was essentially shut down by the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States recorded a deficit for all of 2020 of $681 billion, the largest annual gap since 2008 as the coronavirus disrupted global commerce and confounded then-President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies. …”

The most that Trump was willing to do was to push back against China with his tariffs to create the optics of doing something which simply rerouted global supply chains to other low wage Third World countries.