>>212521225
The current admin doesn't understand how trade works is the simple answer, trade deficit just means you buy more from a country than they buy from you, there's usually no reason for trade to be 1:1, the entire reason that you buy from a foreign market is either they produce something for cheaper than you could or they produce a raw good that you buy to make in to a finished product to sell to another country for a higher price in that way goods go from country x (raw material), to country y (complex manufacturing), to country z (final consumers), there's no reason to back and forth trade something
Their argument which is incoherent and constantly changing seems to be that we need to increase manufacturing in the US which isn't a terrible idea but its not magic, aside from the fact that it takes years to get factories up and running a major reason we buy from other countries is that they pay slave labor wages which is why their shit is so cheap, to compete in the US we either have to accept that we're going to pay higher for things manufactured in the US (not going to happen 60ish percent of americans are paycheck to paycheck and increase in price would kill them and these are also the kind of people that they expect to work these factories), or we also implement slave wages and become (even more of) a third world country
I think the latter is the most likely outcome of all of this, rightoids strip the minimum wage in the next few years, jobs pay literal pennies and expect you to work from them, midwest factory workers die off in droves while the educated upperclass is unaffected working do nothing tech jobs having AI write their emails
