Agreed, Lou, the impact of long term trade deficits may certainly be adverse. However, tariffs that are prone to retaliation and the resulting trade wars shouldn’t ideally be the solution.

There are other measures that a country can take in place of tariffs to tackle its trade deficit, especially when the cause of the deficit is not unfair trading practices.

As mentioned in the article, I will aim to address these in the coming post.

Till then, as I see it, retaliatory tariffs will not only decrease imports but also exports. How can that positively affect the exports minus imports equation?