The U.S. trade deficit got smaller in April but a wider lens shows a less rosy picture

We got new numbers from the Commerce Department today about one of the president’s favorite topics — the trade deficit. Month to month, the trade deficit got smaller, that is, the difference between what we sold to the world versus what we bought, shrunk a bit. That gap was just over $46 billion in April, down from just over $47 billion in March. But year over year, the trade deficit is actually bigger. It’s up 11.5 percent from this time last year. When you step back and dig into the numbers, you start to see how some of the recent trade conflicts are causing shifts in the global economy.

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