GOP Senators take a shot at Trump’s trade deficit beliefs

Donald Trump is obsessed with the trade deficit in this country, but some experts say his rants show that he does not fundamentally understand it.

Now, several GOP Senators, even some of Trump’s allies, are pushing back on Trump’s trade deficit comments as well as his tariffs.

Trump hates trade deficit

When Trump was first asked about his tariffs and what countries like Canada and Mexico can do to avoid tariffs, he was pretty specific.

Trump stated, “They have to balance out their trade, number one. We have deficits with almost every country—not every country, but almost—and we’re going to change it.”

While I applaud Trump’s effort to bring manufacturing back to the United States, that ship may have sailed after decades of declining manufacturing in the country.

Vance Ginn, an economist and adviser in Trump’s first term, pushed back on Trump’s solution, stating, “The tradeoffs from these tariffs are too high.” He continued, “There’s got to be a better way than using them as blunt instrument. Ultimately, they hurt Americans — they’re taxes on Americans.”

GOP pushes back

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who arguably has been Trump’s biggest supporter in Congress after their 2016 tussle for the nomination, is among those pushing back against the tariffs by Trump.

He stated, "Tariffs are a tax on consumers, and I'm not a fan of jacking up taxes on American consumers, so my hope is these tariffs are short-lived, and they serve as leverage to lower tariffs across the globe.”

He then added, "If we're in a scenario 30 days from now, 60 days from now, 90 days from now with massive American tariffs and massive tariffs on American goods in every other country on Earth, it's a terrible outcome.”

Elon Musk had even come out against the tariffs, stating that he was hoping for "complete freedom of trade between the United States and Europe."

It’s a fallacy

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is another key Republican who stated that he is not in favor of tariffs, but he also came out against Trump’s understanding of the trade deficit, and did so rather harshly.

He stated, “The U.S. doesn’t trade with China, you trade with Walmart, you trade with Target, you trade with Amazon. Americans go in and buy a product, it might come from China. Think about it this way, think about the entire trade with China, was all TVs, a million people go to Walmart and all buy a TV, they like the quality, they like the price, they happen to come from China.

“Then you draw a circle around China and the U.S. and say, my goodness, it is a trade deficit, we buy all of our TVs from over there. But each individual transaction, each individual who bought a TV was happy, but how can you draw a circle around a million happy people and say they all got ripped off? There is an economic fallacy here and the fallacy is that trade deficits actually mean anything. They’re an artificial accounting. The only trade that means anything is the individual who buys something. That’s the only real trade and that, by very definition of its voluntary is mutually beneficial or the trade doesn’t occur.”

He added that the United States has been operating with a trade deficit with China for about 50 years now, and “we got richer” in the process. If Trump cannot get the GOP to support his notion, how does he expect Americans to buy into it?