“If you sell to us, you buy from us.”
To Trump’s people it is not so simple. They expect that if we buy $X amount of goods and aservices from a country, that country needs to be buying the same amount of goods and services from us, even if they have no tariffs on any imports from us. In some cases that makes no economic sense on either side of the exchange. There are countries we buy from because that country has the best of something (bananas?) compared to most other places, and so we buy from them because it makes econonic sense. But their standards of living is so far below them we have little to offer that they can afford - so we have a trade decifict with them, so Trump is slapoing them with tariffs. Tariffs will not slow the imports from them nor cause them to buy Boeing jets or Ford autos from us - they can’t afford them.
“to buy Boeing jets or Ford autos from us”
A country that doesn’t need drugs, ambulances or police cars is not known to me.
Does the country use toilet paper? ruled school paper? pens? bleach? plastic bottles? school books? table salt? aluminum foil? ketchup? mustard? lumber? saw blades? washing machines? copper wire? flower seeds? pesticides? water heaters? PVC pipe? solder?
Window glass?
What’s that?
Plastic screen to keep the flies out?
Are you some sort of billionaire?
Their point is; "You might by only 5,000 cars and 2 jets. Buy them from us and not the British and Germans." Multiply that by every country we trade with and not only do U.S. companies regain access those markets, they also take away sales from their overseas competition who have been using U.S. tariffs to their advantage.
This is not U.S. vs Vietnam; it's Boeing vs Airbus, Ford vs Mercedes, etc.