That's how Trump thinks, though. Every transaction is zero sum to him.
I'm also convinced saw the "deficit" part of "trade deficit" and either automatically assumed it was bad thing or knew he could convince low-information voters that it was.
Or maybe he is a dumbass and someone on his campaign staff was the crafty one.
Both Trump and Musk have degrees from the supposedly reputable Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.
If these two are evidence of their quality of graduates, it really raises questions about whether it was another US institution where ‘legacy’ and money buy admissions and it’s impossible not to graduate.
They both know that's not how it works, what's important is that their vase doesn't so they can claim to have improved things by reducing the trade deficit.
"I think that in Trump's mind, he sees trade as a zero-sum game," Moshe Lander, an economics professor at Concordia University, told CBC News. "He's just hearing the word deficit. And that's the end of his math calculation."
This is a wild quote, because it's still trying to apply a lens that is focused on economic decision making.
Trump never pays his bills. He thinks paying people for their work or products is what suckers and losers do. He actively steals from people, and he thinks it's the smartest thing he does.
He thinks the US is wrong for paying for what it buys. Nothing more complicated than that.
It's more like Canada produces a lot of the raw goods America consumes while being more self sufficient in manufacturing.
A larger population should be what creates a trade surplus, if anything, as citizens of industrial societies almost always produce more than they consume. And they consume a lot.
The chart there says 4 million barrels per day, so multiply that by 50 dollars a barrel times 365 days a year... 73 billion dollars, larger than the entire US trade deficit with Canada. If they want to eliminate it, all they have to do is stop buying oil.
It's really easy to put out numbers when they are made up on how you currently feel. Of course they are wrong, he doesn't care and neither do his followers.