Trade Deficits Today, Tomorrow, Forever?
In yesterday’s Breitbart Business Digest, we examined the economists’ brief in Learning Resources v. Trump and its central error: the claim that America’s trade deficits are merely the mirror image of capital inflows—a sign of confidence rather than constraint. We showed that their accounting hides a real-world drain of domestic income offset only by debt. Today we follow that story forward: through the false hope of “intertemporal” balance, the meaning of protectionism, and the question now before the Supreme Court.
The Forever Tomorrow
The economists’ brief gestures toward intertemporal trade theory that nations, like households, may rationally borrow when young to invest in productivity, then save when mature. You accumulate trade deficits today but see surpluses tomorrow.
But the United States has run trade deficits every year since 1971—54 consecutive years. Tomorrow never comes.
Intertemporal theory explains temporary imbalances that reverse over a lifecycle. It cannot justify a permanent structural position as the world’s borrower. At some point, chronic deficits cease to be an investment strategy and become simply the terms of existence.
If the borrowed capital were financing productive investment—infrastruct
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