LOL--good one. The point is actually the opposite: the "free trade" crowd was warning you that if you want the trade deficit to fall you should cause a recession. And the numbers bear them out. Again.
That’s like predicting if you walk off the edge of a building, you’re going to fall.
Any downturn in economic activity will result in imports decreasing, and since a huge chunk of the imports are directly consumed by consumers (oil/oil products and Wal-mart crap), it was a pretty easy prediction to make; so my response to this prediction is “Duh, no, *really*?”
Here’s something the free trade mob didn’t predict: that our current account deficit, plus absurd Keynesian spending during a recession would lead to our trading partners calling for the US dollar to lose reserve status.