JOBS/TRADE DEALS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “You probably work in the service sector. This seems like a safe assertion, as 84 percent of private-sector jobs in the United States are in services.
By contrast, ‘goods-producing’ jobs like logging, mining, construction and manufacturing accounted for only 20.5 million jobs last month, in a nation with 148 million total positions… The most recent reason to wonder is President Trump’s repeated assertion this week that the United States maintains a trade deficit with Canada — a claim contradicted by United States government data… President Trump has made this mental leap numerous times, most notably by referring to the nation’s ‘$800 billion’ trade deficit with the rest of the world. It was actually $568 billion in 2017; the $800 billion number refers only to trade in goods, not counting the United States’ healthy surplus in services trade…
The risk is that if trade negotiators follow the president’s lead and focus entirely on obtaining more advantageous treatment for American goods-producing industries, it could come at the cost of concessions that damage industries that employ far more people.”
–Neil Irwin, “Most Americans Produce Services, Not Stuff. Trump Ignores That in Talking About Trade,” The New York Times online, Mar.16, 2018