It seems like Trump has a mean political streak of blaming almost everyone else for US’s current account deficits. As I have discussed here in my earlier post, US’s current account balance isn’t just merely a simple other countries practicing unfavourable trading practices with the US, but it is also contributed largely by its savings-investments gap. 

In this post by Eichengreen , he makes the point that the current account surplus of $65bn with the US was because of Germany’s high savings rate. In my earlier post, the current account balance is a function of the trade balance and the savings-investment gap in the form of 

Export – Import = National Savings – Investment

Germany ran a budget surplus of EUR23.7bn in 2016, meaning government revenue was more than government spending. The United States current account is the opposite with savings being much lower than investments. Trump should look at himself in the mirror and wonder if he even understands basic economics, because at this rate, he’s just doing this for political brownie points.

Post Photo from Seeking Alpha