It's certainly a good question. Economists can argue about that. It's one of the bars, but it's not the only bar. If that's your only bar, you're really short-sighted in a sense, because the economic flows.... For example, trade surpluses and deficits are one thing, but there's $600 billion in investments. If it's your company in Canada, or your Canadian company in the U.S., where do the profits flow? Where does the interest flow? Because with strength, with natural resources or brain resources, you can build things. That's how you build wealth, basically, not only by looking at the numbers.
The numbers can fluctuate. That's why for energy it's a good thing to take it out, in a sense, because the price and the numbers have fluctuated quite a bit. You have to look at it, but sometimes in a country.... Secretary Ross said that for energy. He said that “we are not self-sufficient in energy”.
Those are words I keep in memory carefully.
He said it's normal that they import energy from their Canadian friends, so they shouldn't count that. That's a “blameless deficit”. The President didn't take it up in a tweet.