[WMarshal]

“Reciprocity is the key to fairness equilibrium. The entire trade issue will equalize over time.”

The trick is to equalize trade before the trade deficits destroy your economy and you reach trade equilibrium because you are too broke to import anything and too broke to manufacture anything to export.

[Hawthorn]

>> The trick is to equalize trade before the trade deficits destroy your economy <<

Not at all. I recommend that you take a little time to educate yourself on the way national income statistics are put together. The double-entry bookkeeping used for national income accounting always works out so that our so-called “trade deficit” is always equal to our investment surplus.

So if we could magically eliminate the “trade deficit” (which we can’t do), we would also be eliminating something like $500 billion worth of annual foreign investment in our country. THAT kind of operation is what would really destroy the economy.

[Cobra64]

Trump is using tariffs as a threat to level the reciprocity playing field. BTW, There is a history of tariffs in the US.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history