trade surplus

A little less unlikely perhaps is the idea that those countries with a trade surplus with the US could help fund the US with an effective tax on their holdings of US government debt.

India has already slashed tariffs on some US goods, with further cuts expected as the balance of trade is still stacked heavily in favour of Delhi, which enjoys a $45bn trade surplus.

Antigua and Barbuda's ambassador to the US, Sir Ronald Sanders, says that the US has long enjoyed a trade surplus with most Caribbean countries.

But as Vietnamese manufacturing has boomed, so has the nation’s trade surplus with the U.S., rising fourfold since 2015 to $123.5 billion last year.

Navarro was the author of the infamous equation that set so-called reciprocal tariff rates in proportion to the size of a country's trade surplus with the US, calling it "the sum of all cheating".