{"id":398450,"date":"2019-03-07T15:47:24","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T14:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/record-us-deficit-in-traded-goods\/"},"modified":"2019-03-07T15:47:24","modified_gmt":"2019-03-07T14:47:24","slug":"record-us-deficit-in-traded-goods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/record-us-deficit-in-traded-goods\/","title":{"rendered":"Record US deficit in traded goods"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>Record US deficit in traded goods<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    Nick Beams<br \/>\n    <br \/>7 March 2019<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>US President Donald Trump has made a reduction of the trade deficit a cornerstone of his economic policies, insisting it drains wealth from the American economy and results from concessions made to rivals by previous administrations.<\/p>\n<p>But data released by the Commerce Department yesterday show that the deficit in traded goods hit an all-time high of $891.3 billion last year, an increase of 10 percent. After tourism, education and banking were taken into account, it was still $621 billion, the highest level in ten years.<\/p>\n<p>The deficit with China, the major target of Trump\u2019s trade war measures, reached a new record, as did the deficit with Mexico. The goods deficit with China widened by $44 billion last year to reach $419 billion, almost half the total.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, US imports rose by 7.5 percent last year, driven by increased spending on consumer goods, industrial supplies and capital goods. Exports rose as well, but only by 6.3 percent, leading to a wider trade gap.<\/p>\n<p>It appears that the expansion of the trade gap is accelerating. It increased by 18.8 percent in December to almost $60 billion, larger than economists\u2019 predictions, as exports fell by 1.9 percent and imports increased by 2.1 percent.<\/p>\n<p>One of the main impacts on the US of the Trump trade war measures against China is in the area of agriculture. As a result of retaliatory measures imposed by Beijing, China\u2019s purchases of American soybeans, wheat and sorghum fell by almost $10 billion last year.<\/p>\n<p> The <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> (WSJ) reported that, as a result of a fall in prices, due to China shifting its source of supplies, US producers had held on to their product in the hope of a better price. But they had now been forced to sell at a loss. The WSJ cited one&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2019\/03\/07\/ustr-m07.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Record US deficit in traded goods By Nick Beams 7 March 2019 US President Donald Trump has made a reduction of the trade deficit a cornerstone of his economic policies, insisting it drains wealth from the American economy and results from concessions made to rivals by previous administrations. But data released by the Commerce [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-398450","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398450\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}