Economically though, the same theories that say that tariffs are economically inefficient say that running a $400 billion trade deficit for twenty years straight should be impossible. If you go back to first principles and some basic economic observations, it's fairly obvious that the trade policy of the U.S. over the past 40 years has not served the interests of a large majority of the American public, i.e. it is economically inefficient from the U.S. perspective. Trump wasn't elected by Putin, even if Putin did push him the last few yards over the goal line. If the Democrats are going to win, they need to be the party of truth and standing up for all Americans instead of just opposite-day Trump.

That's not true. Consider this: how much money have you paid to your dentist over your lifetime? How much has your dentist paid you? There's a pretty big trade deficit there, no? How is that even possible? Of course the answer is looking at trade bilaterally misses the big picture. You and your dentist are part of a larger economy with myriad flows of money. It's that larger economy that allows money from the dentist to flow back to you, even though it's not being tracked in the bilateral scenario.

The same is true at the nation state level. Trade shouldn't be looked at from a bilateral perspective, but from a comprehensive perspective - looking at the world economy.

Not to mention the other problem with these trade numbers: they capture the trade of 'goods.' You may be surprised to learn that the UN Convention on Contract for the International Sale of Goods excludes items bought for personal use (e.g. toothpaste) and aircraft. Which means a lot of the items the U.S. ships to China, think Boeing aircraft and Intellectual Property such as software and movies, are not captured in these deficit numbers. So there's that.

Remember the old adage figures don't lie but liars figure? Nowhere does that apply more than the myopic analysis of trade deficits.

I'm not talking about the dentist either. I'm talking about the overall U.S. trade deficit, not just with China. China is a very big component, but it's not the only one, and China is not the dentist that you see once a year, it's 1.3 billion people, and their products are pervasive on store shelves.

If your response is that doing math is not a legitimate means of economic argumentation, I'm not sure what school of economics you're representing... The myopia is certainly not coming from my side.

One day the President is complaining about the trade deficit and the next he's saying the US needs more foreign investment. I don't think you can coherently hold these grievances together. But if foreign investment is good right now, then the trade deficit must be good.

The U.S. is using debt to pay for current expenses. This is enabled by this foreign investment. Roughly, China's offer over the past twenty years has been the following: "You guys are pretty good at making things, but we're young and hungry for the job. You go home and relax while we do your job, and we'll just loan you the money you would have earned. Good deal, huh?"

The only problem is that eventually they will start seeing us as a bad credit risk, stop loaning the money, and we're left with a pile of debt, some broken appliances, and no recent skills. They wind up with some bonds that they may have to write off, and a highly skilled workforce and a huge industrial base.

But if the US really did need to do all that accounting then how come they've accumulated a debt of 20 trillion?

I'm not saying that the US economy is completely immune, but they certainly seem more immune than other economies.

US debt is literally people who have agreed to take US currency in the future and are not themselves part of the US.

I don't think this is true. Foreign holders of US federal debt are only about 6 trillion of 21 trillion[1]. Most of it is held by the government itself or the American public.

[1]http://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt