Neal Freiman

Maybe try FlavCity's all-in-one protein smoothies instead.

They've got 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of collagen, and functional mushrooms.

No blender required.

They've got great flavors like banana bread, brownie batter, vanilla, and the new pepperminty shamrock.

Seriously, they taste as good as any milkshake.

Seems like there's some middle school lunch trauma you need to unpack.

We can do that a little bit later.

But it is confusing, right?

Trump increased the average tariff rate from 2.6% the year before that to 13% last year.

Wouldn't that lead to importers in the United States not importing as much because that's a lot of money that they need to pay?

Well, here are maybe three reasons that the trade deficit has not gone down.

One is that importers rerouted to lower tariff places.

So we saw that China imports were down 30% last year, but imports from places like Mexico and Vietnam more than made up the difference.

There were no tariffs on some huge items that we import, like pharmaceuticals.

We imported a lot of Wegovy from Novo Nordisk in Denmark and electronics.

uh from from asia and then finally there was a lot of stockpiling going on right after liberation day in april and even before then companies were surging imports into the country in order to get ahead of potential tariffs so maybe those are three reasons why the trade deficit has not gone down and we should say many economists say that having a trade deficit is not the worst thing in the world it's perfectly fine it just shows that the united states is more of a consumer economy

rather than a we make stuff economy.

But if the tariffs intention were to bring down the trade deficit, they are not doing it.

And you mentioned this in the intro, but there is a growing body of research that is trying to explain who is paying the tariffs.

Yes, U.S.