It is hard to think of a President more committed—at least rhetorically—to closing the trade balance than President Trump. The usual criticism of his trade policy is that it is overly focused on a si…

Conventional wisdom among economists is that the China shock ended a decade ago. That is largely because the U.S. bilateral deficit with China has been fairly stable since 2007 (measured as a share o…

Will there be a mismatch between what the U.S. wants to sell (Treasuries) and what the world wants to buy?

Over the last year, U.S. import growth stalled. Capital goods imports did nothing—in part because of weakness in non-residential investment. And consumer goods imports were flat. That appears to hav…