It’s been almost a year and a half since “Liberation Day,” the day that President Donald Trump announced his “reciprocal” tariffs, slapping tariffs on imports from our trading partners to punish them for selling us stuff. Ostensibly, the goal of the tariffs was to eliminate, or at least reduce, our trade deficit.

Trump seems to believe that we are being ripped off if we buy more goods from a country than we sell to them. There can be problems caused by a large trade deficit, especially one that is rapidly growing, as was the case in the first decade of this century. But it doesn’t make sense to claim a country is ripping us off by selling us stuff.

Anyhow, whatever problems we have with trade are poorly addressed by the sort of blanket tariffs imposed by Trump. We may want tariffs to promote the development of certain industries, like solar panels or electric vehicles, or to ensure a stable supply of essential products, like steel and rare earth minerals, but such efforts have little to do with Trump’s tariffs.

He said that he wanted to end the rip-off, which he defined as our trade deficit. It hasn’t worked out that way.

The monthly deficit had been around $90 billion through 2023. (Note that these are advance numbers based on incomplete data. They are generally higher than the final data the Census Bureau releases later.) It rose gradually in 2024, as the growth of the US economy outpaced the growth of our trading partners.........

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