U.S. Trade Deficit Hit a Record High in January

Several cargo boxes on a ship in the ocean

The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in January as the import-export gap widened to a record high, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The trade deficit reached $89.7 billion in January, up $7.7 billion from December 2021’s $82 billion figure, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday. Economists surveyed by the WSJ predicted a January trade deficit figure of just $87.2 billion.

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Commentary: Export Bans and the Re-Emergence of the Nation-State

The COVID-19 pandemic has served to upend many long-held policy assumptions, but none so clearly as the theory that international trade rests purely on economic incentives, and that those economic incentives will always override a country’s more base instincts to act in its own interest because of the cost to global profits.

Responses from countries around the world to COVID-19 have significantly fractured this argument. It can no longer be said with unshakable confidence that nations will sidestep their own economic objectives, interests, and policies for the sake of a more profitable international economic integration.

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China, Tariffs, Trade, Cost and Prices: An Explainer

by Rick Manning   Stock markets go up and down based upon the latest trade rumors. Predictions of price hikes make headlines, yet the inflation rate remains at the levels, 2.0 percent at last count, desired by the Federal Reserve. What is going on?  And is this even really a trade war with…

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Commentary: Contrary to Some Conservatives’ Slavish Devotion Free Trade Dogma, Trade Deficits Do Matter

by Spencer P. Morrison   Steve Hanke recently set out to prove “why President Trump’s trade message and protectionist policies are rubbish” in a Forbes article. Instead, the Johns Hopkins University economist exposed himself as a word-mincing, logic-twisting sophist – just like every other intellectual mercenary associated with the faux-libertarian propaganda mill that is the…

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