President Donald Trump is talking a lot about trade of late, namely trade with China. Just a few days ago, while talking with reporters at the White House, Trump said this:
"Last year we lost $500 billion on trade with China. We can't let that happen."
But we didn't. We lost about $336 billion. That's still a lot of money, but the president is off the mark by about $164 billion.
The president's argument, though, is that the U.S. runs a big trade deficit with China, and he has a point — when it comes to goods, at least. The U.S. actually has a trade surplus in services with China of about $38.5 billion.
