WASHINGTON — The nation’s trade deficit widened to $105.6 billion in August, its largest in 17 months and the widest since just before the President’s tariffs took effect, a result supporters of the administration’s trade policy said Thursday proves the country is now winning so decisively that it has begun importing its own exports.
According to government figures released Tuesday, imports rose 4.3 percent to an all-time high of $420.8 billion, while exports rose 1.4 percent to $315.2 billion, in the first month of data since new tariffs of 10 percent on major allies and 12.5 percent on most other nations took effect. Economists surveyed in advance had expected a deficit of $102.1 billion. The deficit exceeded expectations by 3.4 percent, plus or minus 0.2 percent.
“Other countries are sending us $420.8 billion worth of things. What are we sending them? Less. Who’s winning?” said Dr. Chad Brickhouse, a senior fellow at the Institute for Common Sense, by phone from a hardware store, where he said he was buying “a great deal of imported merchandise, out of patriotism.” “The bigger the deficit, the more they’re giving us. It’s just common sense. A deficit is just a surplus of stuff.”
Supporters noted that the deficit had grown fastest in categories the nation already produces, a development they described as a sign of strength. Among August’s imports, according to an analysis by the Center for Measured Outcomes, were 11,000 tons of American soybeans that had been exported in July, 2,400 domestically assembled pickup trucks returning from abroad “with a different attitude,” and approximately 41 percent of the nation’s own flag shirts, which the Center traced to a factory overseas that receives them, folds them, and ships them back. The Center also identified a $4.2 million shipment of American-made exports that had been exported, re-imported, and re-exported so many times since spring that customs officials no longer know which country it belongs to and have begun referring to it as “the stuff.”
“We are now importing things before we finish exporting them,” said Dr. Marjorie Teller, the Center’s director. “In several ports, the same container is leaving and arriving at once. It has been tariffed 19 times. It is, on paper, the most profitable container in the history of the world, and it is empty.”
Wendell Karsh, executive director of the advocacy group Americans for an Obvious Prize, said the figures should be considered a down payment. “First they send us their money as products. Then they’ll send us their money as money. Then they’ll send us the countries,” Karsh said. “That’s the plan. It’s a three-step plan, and we are clearly on step one, very strongly.”
Through the first eight months of the year, the deficit remains 19.9 percent smaller than during the same period last year, a figure supporters described as further evidence of winning, and which they said they were “not going to explain, because it explains itself.”
The next trade report is scheduled for Nov. 4. Supporters said they expect it to show a deficit of at least $200 billion, which they have already begun referring to as “the big one.”