Everything President Donald Trump does or doesn’t do causes commotion. This time, it’s about economic figures. Trump may change the way we calculate trade deficits, unemployment, and maybe even GDP.
According to a report by The Wall Street Journal citing anonymous sources, the Trump administration asked the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to look into counting only the import side of “re-exports,” ignoring the export leg of the trade.
“Re-exports” are goods imported from one country, like Mexico, and then shipped to another country, like Canada, without any value added. However, the economic owner changes during the process unlike for goods in transit, which are just waved through and don’t count in the figure.
Trump, as usual, is going against the trend of how economic figures are usually adjusted, by trying to expose the weakness of the U.S. economy.
