WE ARE 100% INDEPENDENT AND READER-FUNDED. FOR A GUARANTEED AD-FREE EXPERIENCE AND TO SUPPORT REAL NEWS, PLEASE SIGN UP HERE, TODAY.
The federal government’s budget deficit isn’t the only fiscal crisis President Donald J. Trump has begun to aggressively tackle in his first few weeks in the White House. Trump is also taking initial steps to end the United States’s long-standing international trade imbalance—an economic problem at the very core of the America First agenda. The recent moves to impose tariffs on China—and potentially Canada and Mexico—are giving some insight into how Trump intends to solve the trade dilemma.
In 2024, under former President Joe Biden’s Democrat-controlled White House, the United States trade deficit surged to almost $1.2 trillion—the highest on record. The trade deficit is the gap between what the United States sells…
