| "Promises made. Promises kept." Not so much . . . |
| The overall United States trade deficit continued to widen in the first nine months of 2019, data released Tuesday morning show, defying a Trump administration plan to try to shrink the figure by renegotiating trade agreements.
The trade deficit for both goods and services grew to $481.3 billion in the first three quarters of the year, up 5.4 percent from the same period last year, according to data released by the Commerce Department. Total American exports fell by $7 billion from the previous year, while imports grew by $17.8 billion. The trade deficit in goods for the first nine months also widened slightly from the previous year, as exports of American products fell by more than imports. President Trump has pointed to the trade deficit — an excess of American imports over exports — as a sign of a hollowed-out manufacturing sector, and promised to shrink the figure by reworking the terms of trade between the United States and other countries. The data released Tuesday suggest that the global trade wars Mr. Trump has launched have not had the desired effect. Source: "Trump Vowed to Shrink the Trade Gap. It Keeps Growing." By Ana Swanson - NY Times - Nov. 5, 2019 The president {. . . } suggested he would cut off aid, saying on Twitter last month: “Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were not able to do the job of stopping people from leaving their country and coming illegally to the U.S. We will now begin cutting off, or substantially reducing, the massive foreign aid routinely given to them.” President Trump has yet to follow through on a threat to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in annual aid to three Central American nations from which migrants and refugees are moving toward the United States border, according to the head of the main American foreign aid agency. The lack of action calls into question whether Mr. Trump actually intends to punish the three countries, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, for failing to stop the migrants, or whether his remarks are just political grandstanding. Source: "Despite Trump’s Threats, U.S. Keeps Giving Aid to Central America" By Edward Wong - NY Times - Nov. 3, 2018 |
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