Donald Trump’s sour milk

An excerpt from an editorial in the New York Times:

To hear U.S. President Donald Trump tell it, every other country in the world is taking advantage of the United States by selling milk, cars, steel and other products to America while refusing to buy made-in-the-USA merchandise. Much of what the president has said is malarkey.

It’s true that America has run a large trade deficit for many years, and that some countries — China in particular — have used underhanded tactics like depressing their currencies to increase exports. But, by and large, the world is not ripping off the United States.

Recently, Trump has unleashed his Twitter account on one of America’s oldest and closest friends, Canada, criticizing the country’s decision to protect its dairy industry. Last month, the president railed about that country’s “270 per cent tariff on Dairy Products!” — a statistic that sounds outrageous but really is not.

Do you know which other country protects its dairy industry in a similar way? You guessed it: the United States. In fact, dairy producers in Wisconsin and other states sold $792 million in products to Canada in 2017, while Canadian producers sold just $149 million of dairy to the United States

Trump thinks it’s in his interest to paint America as a victim of cunning foreigners. That much is clear. It’s far less obvious why he believes countries he has subjected to such baseless attacks will negotiate favourable trade agreements with a president who has shown he can’t be trusted.