The manufacturing trade deficit is up significantly in the first two years of the Trump Presidency. Pretty clear that stimulus and a strong dollar has had a bigger effect than his trade protectionism.

Stimulus has meant strong import growth. Strong dollar has meant weak export growth. Shows up clearly in the nominal data.

Deficit in goods trade ex ag and petrol is closing in a on a trillion dollars (tis just under 5% of GDP)
And since the strong dollar is holding down import prices, the "real" change is likely even bigger ...

Export growth hasn't kept up with import growth since the dollar appreciated in 2014. In fact exports of manufactures haven't grown at all in last 4 years
I know there are technical problems with this measure but it still gives some indication of scale; the "real" non-petrol goods deficit (ex ag) is up $180b (e.g. just under a pp of GDP) in Trump's first 7 quarters.

& that follows on a big increase after the dollar's 14/15 move
p.s. adding services here wouldn't change much (and there isn't any true data for most services for q3, a lot of services trade is estimated in the monthly data)
adjustment that matters is taking out petrol --

real petrol deficit fell in 2017 (less so in 2018)

and huge swing in real and nominal over time

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My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:

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I’m torn on how to approach the idea of luck. I’m the first to admit that I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. To be born into a prosperous American family in 1960 with smart parents is to start life on third base. The odds against my very existence are astronomical.


I’ve always felt that the luckiest people I know had a talent for recognizing circumstances, not of their own making, that were conducive to a favorable outcome and their ability to quickly take advantage of them.

In other words, dumb luck was just that, it required no awareness on the person’s part, whereas “smart” luck involved awareness followed by action before the circumstances changed.

So, was I “lucky” to be born when I was—nothing I had any control over—and that I came of age just as huge databases and computers were advancing to the point where I could use those tools to write “What Works on Wall Street?” Absolutely.

Was I lucky to start my stock market investments near the peak of interest rates which allowed me to spend the majority of my adult life in a falling rate environment? Yup.