Art of the Deal, Indeed

The $1.4 Trillion U.S. ‘Surplus’ That Trump’s Not Talking About [...] For China, the image of a massive trade deficit with the U.S. "is at odds with the fact that Chinese consumers own more iPhones and buy more General Motors cars than U.S. consumers," wrote Zhang in the report. "These cars and phones are sold to China not through U.S. exports but through Chinese subsidiaries of multinational enterprises." Instead of a growing trade deficit with China, Deutsche Bank estimates there was a small but growing surplus. The increase reflected rising demand of Chinese households for foreign goods and services, driven partly by the wealth effect of China’s property boom. The sales surplus with China may exceed $100 billion by 2020 if the world’s two biggest economies avoid a trade war, Zhang estimates. The U.S. also ran sales surpluses with nations including Mexico and Canada but had deficits with Japan and Germany last year, Zhang wrote. Aside: Leslie Eastman: "When history is written, the most significant moment in Donald Trump's presidency may be when he issued his "Free Trade Proclamation" at the G7 Summit and used Singapore to “walk away from the table”...planning to eventually make a better deal for our tepid allies. Sensing this, the photograph from the G7 summit is already attracting extraordinary attention."