"Trump is Completely Wrong on the Trade Deficit." Let Levin, Sowell, and Friedman Explain. In this interview, Melton Friedman claimed that "deficits are not bad. What's not to like about a capital surplus." In his book Arguing with Zombies, Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize economist, said, "An end to trade deficits? That's not something trade policy can or should do." The surplus profit earned through cheap foreign labor seeks the most profitable place to go. As the safest and most profitable option, that capital surplus lands in the US stock market. What's not to like about a capital surplus? That fondness intensifies with any threat of it going away, but why would tariffs be such a threat? Scott Bassett, US Secretary of the Treasury, on CNBC's Squawk Box, 4/8/25, said, "If we put up a tariff wall, the ultimate goal would be to bring manufacturing and jobs back to the US. In the meantime, we will be collecting substantial tariffs. As I...
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