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.