Well, howdy there, Internet people, it's Bell again.

So today, we're going to talk about Trump's trade deficit.

Depending on the outlet you watch, or where you get your news, or whether you consider Trump himself a reliable source of information. You've heard different

things about the trade deficit, which was Trump's stated reason for his, frankly, disastrous trade

war. But I think the trade war was disastrous for a bunch of reasons. Did it at least

accomplish his goal of lowering the trade deficits?

Going all the way back to 2016, he said things like, quote,

We tax and regulate and restrict our companies to death,

and then we allow foreign countries that cheat to export their goods to us tax-free.

Notice back then, he was acknowledging a tariff was a tax, and for a decade he's been talking

about the goods trade deficit. Here's a message. Quote, Bell, did the trade deficit go up or down?

Trump said it was down by 78%,

which, yeah, not a source,

but some reputable outlets say it went down.

Some say it went up.

How can we have this much debate over numbers? The problem is that people are

measuring different things and there's a lot of spin. Is it down 78%? Of course not. Not unless you

wildly cherry-picked data under the assumption that the people you're talking to

are, well, like the man says. He loves the uneducated. You can get roughly 78% if you torture the

numbers long enough and cherry-pick a month that had massive imports to avoid Trump's tariffs as your start date,

March 2025.

And then go to October 2025 to try to show a decline.

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