Every few years, American politics rediscovers the same number: the trade deficit. This time it's China's $202 billion. Next time it will be Mexico's, or Vietnam's, or the European Union's. The number gets treated as a scoreboard - and the proposed fix is always the same. Cut off the country running up the score.
The Deficit Delusion asks what would actually happen if the United States followed that logic all the way through: a genuine, comprehensive trade cutoff with the countries it runs its largest deficits with. Not higher tariffs - an actual severing of the relationship.
Drawing on the accounting identity that connects every trade deficit to a capital account surplus, the hard lessons of the 2018-2019 and 2025-2026 tariff wars, and history's clearest precedents - Smoot-Hawley, the Cuban embargo, the sanctions regime imposed on Russia since 2022 - Robert F. Geissler walks through exactly what breaks: the supply chains, the household budget, the Treasury market, the alliances, and the dollar's place in the world. Writing from the Austrian and Chicago School tradition of Hayek, Mises, Friedman, and Sowell, he gives the case for decoupling its full and fair due - and shows why a narrower, security-focused alternative beats a blanket cutoff on every measure that matters.
A trade deficit is not a wound to be closed by force. This book explains why - and what a smarter policy would look like instead.
Independently Published
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