Trump Unveils ‘Pro-American’ Trade Plan If Reelected To Cut Trade Deficit, Even Though It Increased To 2008 Levels Before Leaving Office

Adding to his list of growing early campaign promises for the 2024 presidential election, former President Donald Trump yesterday released what he is calling a “pro-American” trade policy designed to trim down the trade deficit and further detach itself from China.

[I plan] to move from the Biden system that punishes domestic producers and rewards outsourcers to a system that rewards domestic production and taxes foreign companies and those who export American jobs.

To achieve this goal, we will phase in a system of universal base-line tariffs on most foreign products. On top of this, higher tariffs will increase incrementally depending on how much individual foreign countries devalue their currency.

As tariffs on foreign producers go up, taxes on American producers will go down and go down very substantially, and that means a lot of jobs coming in. Not only will this system end our gaping trade deficits – and they are massive right now – and bring back millions of American jobs, it will also bring trillions and trillions of dollars pouring into the United States Treasury from foreign countries and allow us to invest that money in American workers, American families, and American communities.

This plan will be the linchpin of a new strategic manufacturing initiative that builds on my historical success in ending NAFTA [North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement].

We will revoke China’s most-favored-nation trade status and adopt a four year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods, everything from electronics to steel to pharmaceuticals. This will include strong protections to ensure China cannot circumvent restrictions by passing goods through conduit countries – countries that don’t make a product, but all of the sudden they’re selling a lot of product. It comes right through China, right out China, and right into our country.

We will also adopt new rules to stop U.S. companies from pouring investments into China and to stop China from buying up America… And we will eliminate federal contracts to any company that outsources to China.

Trump explaining his vision

.@realDonaldTrump's America First trade platform will SLASH Biden's job-killing trade deficits and usher in a GREAT ECONOMIC BOOM! pic.twitter.com/vKO27nTyzI

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) February 28, 2023

SEE: Donald Trump Announces That He Will Run For President Again In 2024, Exactly 666 Days After He Left Office *UPDATE*

Trump also shared similar sentiments in separate briefing on his vows to lower the trade deficit.

As President I began to successfully slash our trade deficits before the pandemic. Now the Biden administration has us bleeding wealth on a historic scale like never seen before.

Trump said

As Trump has alluded to, the U.S. trade deficit has continued to rocket higher under Biden, with the country posting a new all-time record high deficit of $948.1 billion for 2022. The Trends Journal detailed some of the specifics of this deficit in a report published last week.

However, contrary to Trump’s latest statemeents, the trade deficit was already growing year-over-year under Trump’s tenure.

In January 25th, 2021, tabulating the latest rounds of economic data at the time with Trump less than a week removed from office, citing a Trends Journal article on the data – the tariffs levied upon China by the Trump administration proved to have failed, as China’s exports only increased. The TJ wrote at the time (in part):

Trade War? Forget about it!

In 2020, China exported $2.6 trillion worth of goods and services, 3 percent above 2019’s level and a new record, China’s Administration of Customs reported last week.

December’s exports were more than 18.1 percent above those a year earlier, far above economists’ expectation of a 12.9-percent hike. 

In December, China exported 34.5 percent more to the U.S. than it did in December 2019, giving it a $29.95-billion trade surplus with America for the month. For the year, China reaped a record $316.9-billion surplus from the U.S., China’s government said, despite Donald Trump’s efforts to balance the books with China by levying tariffs on its goods.

SEE: Trump Undoes Executive Order To “Drain The Swamp” Hours Before Leaving Office

Then only a couple of weeks later it was revealed that the States’ trade deficit had risen all the way back to the 2008 levels to closeout Trump’s first tenure. Again, citing the The TJ for the data, the economic outlet detailed:

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The annual U.S. trade deficit was $481 billion in 2016 when Donald Trump became president and rose by almost a third to $678.7 billion at the end of December 2020, according to a 5 February report from the U.S. Commerce Department.

It was the largest trade deficit since 2008, Reuters noted.

The deficit grew 17.7 percent in 2020 alone, rising from $577 billion at the end of 2019. The global economic shutdown slashed demand for U.S. goods as well as U.S. production, while China’s economy hummed, supplying more goods than ever to the U.S. and the world.

The Trump administration never had a feasible plan for reducing the trade deficit. The 2017 tax cut ensured that the U.S… would continue to spend more than it produced, hence the… deficit.

Tariffs reduced imports from China, but these were mostly replaced with imports from other sources.

Mary Lovely. Senior fellow for the Peterson Institute for International Economics

The U.S. trade deficit with China specifically fell from $419 billion in 2016 to $311 billion at the end of 2020, due in large measure to tariffs Trump laid on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods, according to Politico.

However, during Trump’s term, the U.S. trade deficit rose with France, Germany, Ireland, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Also, imports from China spiked during 2020’s last six months as the U.S. economic shutdown sent merchants and manufacturers looking elsewhere for supplies.

Under Trump’s “Phase One” China trade deal, China bought vast amounts of U.S. corn during the last six months of 2020 but far less than the $76.7 billion in total goods and services China had agreed to buy in 2020. The deal’s 2021 benchmark is $123.3 billion.

The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol collected $74.4 billion in tariffs on imports during the U.S. government’s fiscal year 2020. Despite Trump’s claim that foreign governments paid tariffs, in reality, the tariffs were added to the cost of the items imported, raising prices for consumers.

Goods exported from the U.S. to China in calendar 2020 totaled $110 billion, compared to about $130 billion in 2017, census bureau figures show. Services exported to China carried a value of $28 billion through 2020’s first three quarters; the total services exported to China in 2017 were valued at $55 billion.

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SEE: Ivanka Trump Admits In Tweet That The Trump Admin. Already Partnered With Moderna To Produce MRNA Vaccines BEFORE Operation Warp Speed

Since then the Trump administration simply passed the torch and gave the Biden crew the keys to the car, with the trade deficit increasing almost every month since then; to the point where it is at now, an all-time record high and with zero indications that this will stop. The WinePress has documented a handful of these increases along the way.

The Trends Journal, once again, has long been forecasting that this will not stop, and that Trump’s plan was simply all-talk and no real action.

In large measure, Donald Trump gained the presidency by promising to shrink the U.S. trade deficit. However, as we continued to detail—as with his building “The Wall” that was barely built and repairing the nations’ rotting infrastructure that is still rotting—his trade deals were more Trump talk and no real action. However, President Trump did keep his promise to again rig the tax laws which enriched himself and the one percent.

Yet on the trade deficit front, it continued to grow during his administration […], and remains near record levels, largely because Americans continue to buy, buy, buy.

[…] Until America becomes more of a self-sustaining economy and brings more manufacturing back home, the trade deficit will continue to increase as long as Americans insist on buying the newest smartphone, four televisions in their homes, and a new wardrobe every season.

That process is underway: the U.S. has added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs since 2020. However, consumers have continued to spend, cleaning out their savings accounts and piling up debt to keep spending, now on services instead of stuff.

However, consumers have been spending less through the last half of 2022, in part because their savings accounts have collectively shrunk by more than two-thirds and also because shoppers are maxing out their credit cards.

Consumers’ spending supports some 70 percent of the U.S. economy. With those shoppers running out of the means to keep buying, and as prices keep rising… the economy will drift closer to recession as inflation rolls on.

The Trends Journal wrote and forecast – (merging their sentiments from two separate reports)

SEE: Trump Says He Wants To Prohibit Lobbying If Reelected, Even He Though Allowed It To Occur Before Leaving Office. Wants To Plant Flag On Mars

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AUTHOR COMMENTARY

A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness will utter lies.

Proverbs 14:5

Oh, he wouldn’t lie to you would he? He’d never do such a thing, right? He wants to make America great again, right? How dare you criticize the Teflon Don? He’s pro-America don’t you know? He’s an outsider that cares about you, you know?

That was of course sarcasm…

The data speaks for itself. Don’t listen to their words: FOLLOW THE MONEY, for therein lies the truth.

A feast is made for laughter, and wine maketh merry: but money answereth all things.

Ecclesiastes 10:19

The proof is in the pudding, the data (that we are allowed to see) is all right there in black and white for all to see. But that’s the problem: people do NOT want to know, even though this information is free for all to search and see for themselves. And because the masses are in the dark, people like Trump can come out and say that he wants to reduce the trade deficit, when it was his policies that rocketed it back higher in the first place; and then bold-face lie and say that he was reducing it!

It’s no better than when Biden claims that the economy is booming and increasing, jobs keep growing, unemployment is super low, wages are increasing, people are spending more [because of inflation], and on and on.

Take your pick: Donald Duck or Goofy: it’s a big Disney freak show!

But this data and much more will not phase most Trumpers. They have been spellbound; for “MAGA” is the highest rank achievable in the Church of Satan.

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[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).

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