President Donald Trump said Thursday that it was “a good thing, not a bad thing” that he’d crippled the international economy, putting workers’ livelihoods in jeopardy.
During a press briefing in the Oval Office, Trump downplayed concerns over job security sparked by a significant drop in cargo volumes as a result of his sweeping tariff policy and ongoing trade negotiations with China.
One reporter said that traffic at U.S. ports “has really slowed, and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” before being interrupted by the president.
“That means we lose less money, you know? When I see that, that means we lose less money,” Trump replied. He claimed that China had been making “over a trillion, 1.1 trillion, in my opinion.”
“And frankly if we didn’t do business, we would have been better off,” Trump continued. “So, when you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.
Trumpian algebra dictates that shrinking trade with China may curtail the country’s trade deficit, but he doesn’t even know what a trade deficit is, let alone how big it is.
Unlike Trump’s enormous estimate, America’s trade deficit with China was just $295.4 billion in 2024. The president has previously claimed that the U.S. is losing $2 trillion a year on trade, but the country’s trade deficit with the rest of the world was $917.8 billion in 2024.
All of this comes back to Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of economics. A deficit isn’t money lost but an indication that the U.S. has imported more goods and services than it exports. Economists say that having a trade deficit is not an inherently bad thing at all, because the U.S. simply can’t and shouldn’t make everything.
Trump’s continued insistence we’ve been taken for a ride betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of economics, built off a dislike of other countries. Crucially, when he says that the U.S. would be “better off” if they hadn’t done business with China, what he actually means is that China would be worse off, which to him is the same thing.
But what gets lost in Trump’s phony economic model? Actual workers, whose jobs at U.S. ports undoubtedly will be affected by a sudden reduction in trade.
In Seattle, port commissioner Ryan Calkins told CNN Wednesday night that there were “no container ships at berth.”
“That happens every once in a while at normal times, but it’s pretty rare,” Calkin said. “And so to see it tonight is I think a stark reminder that the impacts of the tariffs have real implications.”
Ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, have already seen a 44 percent drop in docked vessels from the same time last year, according to NBC4 News.
Trump also has no concern for consumers, who soon will begin to see shortages on goods from other countries, and an inevitable price increase on the scant products that remain. The president has suggested that concerns over shortages are as trivial as having fewer dolls and pencils.
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