Trump asks China to cut $1 billion off its $375 billion trade surplus with the US

That’s less than a 0.27% reduction

Yesterday, Donald Trump showed off once again his peerless dealmaking abilities, tweeting about how China had apparently been asked to develop “a plan for the year of a One Billion Dollar reduction in their massive Trade Deficit with the United States.”

“Our relationship with China has been a very good one,” Trump continued. “We look forward to seeing what ideas they come back with. We must act soon!”

While $1 billion may seem like a lot of money — particularly when the first letter of each word is capitalized — it’s worth pointing out that the US trade deficit with China actually rose by $28 billion in Trump’s first year of office to $375.2 billion (not counting services) — that’s more than One Billion Dollars a day.

Trump is at least somewhat familiar with this statistic. At a joint press conference yesterday with the Swedish Prime Minister, Trump showed off his usual care for facts and figures by twice stating that the US has a $500 billion per year trade deficit with China. Last month, he put the deficit at a more precise — but still false — $504 billion.

While the majority of economists believe that running a deficit, even one as large as the US has with China, isn’t really a problem, Trump appears to see international trade as a game that is won or lost depending on who has the surplus and who is running a deficit.

And so, to start winning once again, Trump, the Dealmaker in Chief, is pressing China to reduce that deficit by a whopping 0.27%.