Скачать или смотреть Did Trump's Tariffs Fix the Trade Deficit？Economist Justin Wolfers Responds By Laughing

What if the “trade deficit” is mostly a misleading label—and tariffs were never going to fix it anyway?

This clip breaks down why the U.S. goods trade deficit can rise even during a tariff-heavy trade war—and why that isn’t automatically a sign of economic failure. The key confusion: a trade deficit is measured in dollars, but the flip side is that Americans are receiving more goods (“stuff”) than they’re sending abroad. If the goal is higher living standards, obsessing over the deficit can push policy in exactly the wrong direction.

Tariffs don’t change the “river” (the macro forces driving the overall balance). They mostly reroute the “flow of the river”—shifting supply chains and trade partners, like imports moving from China to Taiwan or Mexico overtaking Canada as the top U.S. trading partner. Meanwhile, retaliation hits U.S. exporters, from bourbon to wine, and trade relationships built over decades get needlessly destabilized.

The stakes are real: trade wars raise costs, shrink markets for American workers and firms, and can push allies to build new economic and geopolitical alliances without the United States—costs that show up in prices, jobs, and long-run American influence.

Topics covered:
Why a larger trade deficit doesn’t prove tariffs “failed” (or “worked”)
How a trade deficit is also a surplus in goods and services
Why countries aren’t companies—and trade isn’t a scoreboard
How tariffs reroute supply chains rather than change the overall deficit
Why bilateral trade deficits (with China, for example) are a bad obsession
The grocery-store analogy for understanding bilateral trade balances
How retaliation harms U.S. exporters (bourbon, wine, tourism)
Why Mexico surpassing Canada reflects disruption, not victory
How trade fights become geopolitical fights—and push allies elsewhere

Contents:
00:00 Trade deficit hits a record—what should it mean?
01:10 Did tariffs “work”? What the basic data imply
02:10 The problem with treating the trade deficit as a crisis
03:10 “Surplus in stuff”: what the deficit actually measures
04:35 Tariffs shift trade flows (China vs. Taiwan, Mexico vs. Canada)
05:30 Why bilateral deficits are a misunderstanding
06:35 Trade war retaliation and who gets hurt
08:05 Boycotts, tourism as exports, and narrow pain points
09:05 Allies building new deals—and the geopolitical fallout

🎯 Key takeaway: Tariffs don’t “fix” the trade deficit—they mostly rearrange trade while raising real costs for households and exporters.

Subscribe for more clear-eyed economics with Justin Wolfers—because Econ 101 beats Trade War 101 every time. 📚📉

CBC | Power & Politics | February 19, 2026