US Tariff War: A Wild Goose Chase

For a long time, the US has cited "security" as a reason to restrict exports of its advanced semiconductors and other high-tech products to many countries from which it imports natural resources and consumer goods.

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Were it not for this, the US' so-called trade deficits would not have been the size they are today.

And rather than other countries robbing the US of jobs, as the Donald Trump administration claims, it is the high cost of labor in the country that means it cannot compete with emerging market economies for manufacturing jobs. Today, the service sector accounts for more than 70 percent of the US' economy.

The sizable antitrust digital tax that both the European Union and Canada propose to levy on large US multinational tech companies serves as a reminder of the huge surplus in trade of services the US enjoys from its trade with the rest of the world that it intentionally excludes from the calculation of the US' trade balance.