Comment by tzs

Sanders might impose tariffs, but he would be smart enough to realize that if trade deficits need to be reduced what matters is reducing the deficit on the aggregate trade, not reducing the deficits individually with each trade partner.

Trump is treating each country as a separate issue and wants to reduce the deficits with each of them. That's completely stupid because even if every country got rid of all trade barriers and protectionism there would still be deficits with some countries and surpluses with others because different countries need to import different things.

For example say country A needs some natural resource that they have no domestic supply of, so they import that from country B. A uses that to produce goods for their own use and for export.

Country B's biggest need is some other resource that they lack, so they use the money they get from selling their resource to A to buy the resource they need from C.

In this scenario A runs a trade deficit with B and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this.

The whole freaking point of money is to make it so you can trade for goods without having to have goods of your own that the other party wants.