I have no insight on the matter so I'll just ask, does he have a point?
He's showing his massive ignorance. A big part of the reason for the deficits is because American companies outsourced production (which is partly his fucking fault, he was part of that whole movement because he wanted higher profit margins so he gladly fucked over America to get them). Another big reason is because the US had the dominant economy, we were rich and were buying shit from everyone else for decades. We also were propping up the economies of a lot of other countries (post WWII, we were helping to reshape a lot of places around the world, Japan and Germany being good examples - although kept growing for good reasons that don't have to do with American aid), as a means to help stabilize things. Those things were going to change (outsourcing isn't necessarily all bad, the issue is that we did it in such a way that we really took our legs out, for instance in electronics tech stuff, we cut jobs out so much that it made going to school for it more of a waste, so we have a huge dearth of qualified candidates, meaning even if we were to try to bring jobs like that back, we're going to have to import the workers for it; and there's tons of other fields where we already have to do that or have been moving that direction).
The stupid part is that, inherently, outsourcing and the like (globalization) aren't bad things (arguably they're great, in fact I think they're the biggest reason for the relative levels of peace that we saw post WWII, when it became that hurting others you'd just hurt yourself; and helping others helped you and them). If it weren't for the fact he's the one constantly blaming that as the cause of America's ills, I wouldn't even despise him for having been part of it. But the fact that he's a massive hypocrite, and doesn't understand that the reason why America has stagnated within is because of the Republican policies that is working to destroy the middle class (yes outsourcing is part of that, it was the level of it that they pushed for, if they'd have been moderate, we wouldn't have seen the rapid change where we basically made China a superpower while diminishing ourselves with the only way to remedy that taking decades to build up our resources - in the form of factories and workers). During Reagan they let things become extreme, and we've been long overdue for paying for that. We lucked out that computing and then the internet and further developments of that helped keep us at the forefront, and that because we still had the dominant market that automotive production was viable. And this isn't a just Republican issue, but we were slow in adapting for other markets (but often its because of conservatives; like if we'd had jumped whole hog into renewable energy earlier; or how anti-intellectualism has stagnated the "brain drain" where the US was getting most of the smartest people of the whole world). What is the most stupid aspect of that is how it perfectly exposes "free market" bullshit. Oil companies should have fucking seen the writing on the walls (they did actually), but instead of them pumping money into alernative energy (to dominate that and maintain their position) they fought it, paying off politicians to lie and protect them (and now are becoming more desperate because those other markets now are becoming so viable that simple economics is starting to squeeze them out).
Oh and with regards to tariffs and shit. The US imposes plenty of their own and we subsidize the shit out of many industries, including ones that were already basically the most profitable on earth like fossil fuel companies. There were some good reason for that, but we let the corporate welfare get too great such that it was hurting us, but it also became so ingrained that stopping it would have just hurt us too (the irony of conservatives bleating about welfare making people lazy and refusing to see that's been exactly the case with corporate welfare, which needs reform more than personal welfare did/does). Oh, same with food production, we made ourselves fat with cheap plentiful food (which there was good reason to help stabilize and boost food production, but we went far and above that; although we're probably going to have to get drastic about it going forward as global warming could be devastating if we don't), but if we cut farming subsidies now we'd just hurt ourselves as it'd probably take out a lot of small farmers, and corporate farming would then squeeze us more (especially since they're trying to gut the oversight of that).
Another aspect he ignores, is that the US becoming the defacto market of the world helped us. You think us controlling/dictating the stock market situation didn't benefit us? You think we'd been able to do that without being the dominant economic power in the world for decades? But you think that would have happened if the US wasn't buying shit all over the world?
The point being, this stuff is more complex than dumbasses like Turmp act. He's basically selling people that America should've been kings (with some Americans more kingly than others, but compared to the rest of the world even the American peasants would still be kings). That only happens if you don't give a shit about the people in the rest of the world. Its FYGM on a world stage. That's what people need to understand is where Turmp is coming from. He wants things the way they used to be, where the US could bend anyone else over (via economic means, and if you protested, well we'd resort to other means too). A lot of Americans (and much of the rest of the world) see that there are ways where everyone can benefit. Don't get me wrong there are those types of people elsewhere, but Americans let those people control and weaponize it for their own personal gains. Which, at the time, we were ignorant (not maliciously so, well not as much at least; we simply didn't have the economic understanding to know exactly what they were actually doing; and we let many of the benefits blind us from seeing them fully).
This is why I fucking hate modern conservatives. A fair amount of the ideals they profess, aren't bad, or at least not as evil as the implementations of them have been. The problem is they refuse to see that they're only pushing extreme versions of them and have been for some time. They let greed overcome them so instead of us getting the solid gradual progress, we basically are bouncing around. They are able to dupe a lot of people because they can point to the success when those ideals are moderated and regulated well. But that's not what they end up pushing. There's a lot of similarities with communism, where the ideals sound good, but the implementation falls apart. And its because of the same type of people (the greedy assholes who want the power for themselves). China saw a huge boom because they realize that if they moderated their communist methods using a staunchly regulated (yes, there are many ways its not that aren't factored in) market approach, they'd get to reap a lot of benefits.
The last thing is how these assholes bleat about other places gaming things and acting like they weren't doing that shit. They're just pissed that now others know as much (if not more than) them and are able to beat them at their own game (partly because they got clamped down on because of the shit they were pulling). They epitomize so much about what they complain in others.
He's not aware that everybody loses a trade war, it's just a question of degree.
Also the idea that money collected from tariffs will outweigh the negative economic effects is insane in the membrane.
That too.