So in essence, with all other factors remaining unchanged (the economic impossibility upon which all economic theory is based), a weaker dollar will cause our trade deficit to decline. However, the trade deficit isn't our problem.
Having a trade deficit is a good thing because it sends dollars into the rest of the world - the goal is to have those dollars reinvested in American capital markets, businesses, entrepreneurial ventures, etc., within the US. The problem now is that this Administration is doing everything in it's power to scare off this investment. Currently, $500 billion per year is flowing out of the US, and none of it is coming back via investments. Foreign investors are hesitant to invest when they don't know what the tax rate is going to be for the next two years. So they continue to sit on these dollars and wait it out, hoping that the US will come to it's senses and decrease corporate and capital gains tax rates, and eliminates it's draconian restrictions on the movement of capital across the US border.
That's an impressive sounding justification for a belief in something that does not happen.
What the argument overlooks is the fact that foreigners do not buy American goods with foreign currency. They sell their things to get dollars that are used to buy our exports. That 'shift downward to the right' on one graph is canceled by an opposite 'shift upward to the left' on the other.
What you say Hoodat makes sense to me. Weaker currency = lower trade deficit all other things being equal. Expat Panama’s post showing a lack of correlation between currency and trade ignores the “other factors” it seems to me. We’ve had a steadily growing trade deficit over time with fluctuations in our currencies value.