An example of just how bonkers – and bipartisanly so – are many allegedly serious discussions by political types of trade is found in this short report on a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. In this hearing, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) complained about America’s trade deficit in agricultural goods. And U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai (also at this hearing) apparently treated this complaint as if it is economically meaningful.
But of course an “ag trade deficit” is no more economically meaningful than is a “yellow-things trade deficit” or a “things-bigger-than-a-breadbasket trade surplus.” There is absolutely no reason to expect that a country will export – during any year or over time – the same amount of agricultural products that it imports. Indeed, because of the principle of comparative advantage, each country will import things that it doesn’t produce at home and export different things. In short, countries are supposed to have so-called ‘trade deficits’ in some things and so-called ‘trade surpluses’ in other things.
Because “agricultural goods” is a portmanteau category – a category that includes many different agricultural goods (strawberries, wheat, pineapples, pork bellies, etc.) some of which we Americans produce at a comparative advantage and others of which we produce at a comparative disadvantage – America almost certainly runs ‘surpluses’ in some of these goods and ‘deficits’ in others. For example, America might be a net exporter of wheat, maple syrup, and rawhides, and a net importer of grapes, artichokes, and salmon. It’s therefore possible that in a calendar year American exports of “ag goods” would equal American imports of “ag goods.” But, again, there simply no reason to expect any such ‘equality’ and, thus, mentioning and treating the “ag trade deficit” as if it is an economically meaningful concept only shows how primitive trade-policy discussions (and trade-policy making) remain in 2024.
(HT to Ricky Wylde for sending the piece linked to above.)
When the Trump administration decided in 2018 to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imported steel, the same employment tradeoffs emerged…. The steel industry employs about 147,000 workers, while there are roughly 2.3 million workers in steel-using industries. The tariffs cost Ford Motor Company a billion dollars in added costs of production because the tariffs made American steel the most expensive in the world. The higher steel costs also hurt Caterpillar and John Deere, as well as machinery producers. 
The total capital stock available to U.S. workers and businesses, for any given U.S. saving rate, surely must grow more rapidly with an inflow of capital from abroad than it would without that inflow, even though some imported capital may be consumed instead of being invested in productive facilities. The greater growth of capital stock, therefore, must be reflected in greater growth of total U.S. product (and consumption) than we otherwise would have. So the “burden of debt service” can be paid out of the greater product. How would this be different from the burden of domestic debts? Why does it matter who holds the debt (or equity)?
It is scientifically sensible to say that all behavior is in some sense caused. But a society that thinks scientific determinism renders personal responsibility a chimera must consider it absurd not only to condemn depravity but also to praise nobility. Such moral derangement can flow from exaggerated notions of what science teaches, or can teach, about the biological and environmental roots of behavior.
This disdain [in Spain] toward those who were economically productive extended to such displays of bigotry as the mass expulsion of Jews in the fifteenth century and of Moriscos in the seventeenth century – mass exports of human capital in both cases. Such attitudes were not unique to Spain. 
