Aw, c’mon, dude. Don’t you know that there are hundreds of little Willie Green-style economic illiterates here who think tariffs and idiotic trade wars are the only way to go?
As for the article, it’s largely meaningless. Our trade deficit with China is what it is and there is a capital flow surplus of precisely equal size. It’s about as significant as Georgia’s perpetual trade deficit with Florida in oranges.
Even if we were to account for trade based on the value-add, that would just redistribute chunks of our deficit to other countries. Which might be slightly useful as it would deemphasize our Chinese deficit (and maybe the rabid slaverings and gibberish of the protectionists,) but wouldn’t change reality at all. Not to mention that it would be offset to no small extent by a lower U.S. export number to China (and elsewhere) because not all of our export content is domestic value-add.
Our real problem is the ongoing desecration by the Narcissist-in-Chief and the rest of the socialists of the U.S. as a preferred investment destination. Without that, there won’t be any trade deficit for the protectionists to worry about.
What style of economic illiterate are you?