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Monday, September 7th, 2020

Trade deficit soars to 12-year high despite Trump’s promises to wipe it out

Author:     Jake Johnson
Source:     Salon
Publication Date:     SEPTEMBER 5, 2020 4:42PM (UTC)
 Link: Trade deficit soars to 12-year high despite Trump’s promises to wipe it out
Stephan:   The stock market is an artificial world; its economy is not the nation's functional economy. The reality is the U.S. faces the largest endebtedness in 8 decades. and the trade deficit, well, here are the facts on the trade deficit. Trump's incompetence could hardly be made clearer. Biden is going to inherit an economy akin to that of  the Geat Depression of the 1930s. It will be an excellent time to do what Roosevelt did and try completely new approaches; ones whose first priority is fostering wellbeing instead of maximizing profit. Countries like New Zealand are showing the way. Trump is like Nero, a historical grotesque whose very being makes the principle clear, by being the extreme antipode
Photo: Getty Motage: Salon

Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail in 2016 that, if elected president, he would bring about a rapid and unprecedented decline in the U.S. trade deficit.

But new figures released by the Commerce Department on Thursday—nearly four years after Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election—show that the trade deficit soared to a 12-year high in July due in large part to a surge in imports, bringing the total negative trade balance in the first seven months of 2020 to $340 billion.

“Trump pledged to eliminate the trade deficit and end job outsourcing, but the overall 2020 deficit is on track to be larger than when he took office, and his Labor Department has certified more than 300,000 American jobs were lost to outsourcing and imports during his presidency,” Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, said in a statement.

Wallach noted that the 300,000 job-loss number is likely an underestimate given that it only “reflects the number of workers whose trade-related job losses were approved for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) retraining and other benefits.”

“The July […]

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