Is the trend more important than if there is actually a surplus or deficit, as one commenter suggests? On a bilateral basis, I don’t think either is particularly important, but as a matter of fact I think we need to verify that the US-Canada bilateral trade balance in goods and services is (barely) positive in 2017, and trending upward on a quarterly basis.

Figure 1: US-Canada trade balance in 000’s US$, s.a. (blue), and 12 quarter trailing moving average (red). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, NBER, author’s calculations.

Figure 1: Real GDP growth, actual (bold black), forecast of NY Fed Nowcast 3/16 (green), Atlanta Fed GDPNow 3/16 (red), Goldman-Sachs 3/19 (red), Macroeconomic Advisers 3/16 (blue), Merrill Lynch 3/19 (blue), q/q SAAR. Source: CR, Macro Advisers, Goldman-Sachs.

GDP growth in Q1 has been lower in the past years, few consistent with residual seasonality.

My view is that if we pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year (we should probably spend more) on collecting and analyzing economic data, we should use that data. Yet, when Mr. Trump debates trade policy with the Canadian prime minister, by his own admission he makes up numbers.

Continue reading →

Mr. Trump holds forth on how he interacts with other heads-of-state (from TIME):

And by the way, Canada? They negotiate tougher than Mexico. Trudeau came to see me, he’s a good man, he said we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please. Nice guy, good looking guy. Comes in. Donald we have no trade deficit. He’s very tough. Everyone else, getting killed or whatever. But he’s tough. I said, well Justin, you do. I didn’t even know. Josh, I had no idea. I just said you’re wrong. You’re wrong. It was so stupid. [LAUGHTER]. I thought it was fine. I said, you’re wrong Justin. He said, nope we have no trade deficit. I said, well in that case I feel differently. I said but I don’t believe it. I sent one of our guys out. His guy, my guy. They said check because I can’t believe it. Well, sir you’re actually right, we have no deficit but that doesn’t include energy and timber. [LAUGHTER]. Well you don’t have timber, and when you do we’ll lost $17 billion. It’s incredible.

USTR notes that the 2016 bilateral trade balance between the US and Canada is +12.9 billion.

And yet there are still people (such as Rick Stryker) who will write:

I believe that Trump is the most honest politician we’ve seen or probably will see in our lifetime.

For this portion of the population, facts will remain irrelevant.

Figure 1: Goods trade balance (blue), and trade balance (red), in billions of $, SAAR. Orange shading denotes 2017M01-onward. Source: BEA/Census, author’s calculations.

I think I’ve had enough of “winning so much”.

In a previous post, and as flagged by reader rtd, I wrote too quickly and did not show the full set of changes to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services mission statement. Apologies for the omission. The wording of the new mission statement — on top of deleting “a nation of immigrants” — are in my mind actually much worse, and I thank rtd for alerting me. Below is a fuller accounting of changes, annotated.

Continue reading →

[edited to quote current Mission Statement verbatim, per rtd‘s comment; new text in red, original text below in blue]

America under Mr. Trump is transmuted. US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) modifies its mission statement from:

[changed text 2/24 12PM Pacific – thanks to rtd for pointing out that “as a nation of immigrants” is not the only thing modified] Original text reads:

“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”

The head of USCIS stated that this change was not at the direction of the White House.

Following up on the other candidate variables in this post.

Figure 1: Mass shooting deaths (black), wounded (gray), both 12 month trailing moving average. February observation for data through 2/23. Source: Mother Jones and author’s calculations.

Continue reading →

Fact-check please!

Continue reading →

Figure 1: Mass shooting deaths (red), wounded (pink). February observation for data through 2/14. Light blue shading denotes assault weapon ban. Orange shading denotes implementation HJ Res 40. Source: Mother Jones, news accounts for 2/14, and author’s calculations.

Continue reading →