, Columnist
The Donald vs. Das Auto
At least if you think it's morally wrong to sell lots of cars.
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When they want Donald Trump to grasp a topic, his advisers have learned to keep things simple. Visual aids help.
Unfortunately, global economic imbalances -- the massive trade deficits of the U.S. and U.K. and surpluses of Germany and China -- are complicated and intractable. No matter, Trump has found a simplistic way to frame the problem: Americans buy lots of German cars, whereas mean Germans don’t buy many from the U.S. Ergo, the overall U.S. trade deficit with Germany was about $65 billion last year. And deficits are bad.