Even as some one who supports moderate tariffs I don’t see benefit in reducing the trade deficit per se. Trade deficits can be highly beneficial. The benefit of tariffs is revenue, partial protection from competition, psychological (easier to appreciate), independence to some extent, maybe some other stuff.
On a somewhat different note… Bretton Woods is long defunct. It’s unclear to me how much of an impact there is from the dollar being the dominant reserve currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-exchange_reserves is the only site I could find with any data beyond 1 year. And it seems like USD reserves actually declined between 2019-Q2 & 2024-Q2 from 6.752 trillion to 6.676 trillion.
Why would you want to do that?
I don’t know, but many people do.
Even as some one who supports moderate tariffs I don’t see benefit in reducing the trade deficit per se. Trade deficits can be highly beneficial. The benefit of tariffs is revenue, partial protection from competition, psychological (easier to appreciate), independence to some extent, maybe some other stuff.
On a somewhat different note… Bretton Woods is long defunct. It’s unclear to me how much of an impact there is from the dollar being the dominant reserve currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign-exchange_reserves is the only site I could find with any data beyond 1 year. And it seems like USD reserves actually declined between 2019-Q2 & 2024-Q2 from 6.752 trillion to 6.676 trillion.