The country might be getting tired of this kind of winning, as Menzi Chinn points out in his update of Trumps fixation of the China-US bilateral trade balance:US merchandise exports to China (blue), and seasonally adjusted using X-13 with lunar new year dummy (bold dark blue), and US merchandise imports from China (red), and seasonally adjusted (bold dark red), both in billions US$, at annual rates. NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Trump administration shaded light orange. Source: BEA/BuCensus, NBER, and author’s calculations.

Of course, examining any bilateral trade balance is not the right metric (see here). If any trade balance matters, it is the overall, not a bilateral. Also, this is part II of the ongoing series “tired of winning the trade war”