🟣 This Trade Deficit ‘Crash’ Was Engineered.…

🟣 This Trade Deficit ‘Crash’ Was Engineered. And It’s Brilliant.

What looked like a dramatic collapse in U.S. trade was actually something more strategic, and far less chaotic.

After Trump’s tariff salvo in late March, U.S. companies flooded ports in a preemptive supply push. Imports in March hit an unprecedented $344 billion. That wasn’t growth. It was frontloading on adrenaline.

April told the story in reverse: a 20% drop in goods imports, which looked jarring on paper but reflected a return to baseline. The trade deficit fell by almost half. Big headlines. Misleading implications.

Consumer goods imports fell 32% from March, but were up 5% from the same time last year. Industrial supplies followed the same pattern. Only vehicles bucked the trend, down 19% year-over-year, with no March surge to soften the blow. That 25% tariff on foreign-assembled cars? It either caught companies off guard or gave them no logistical wiggle room to adapt.

These numbers aren’t chaos. They’re choreography. Tariffs triggered a three-act trade #macro ballet: stock up, slow down, recalibrate.

If the 90-day #tariffs pause ends without a deal, expect Act Four: another import spike in June.

This isn’t #trade breaking. It’s trade bracing. imo #nostr.