A Fate Worse Than Deficits

Those alarmed by the U.S. trade deficit should be heartened by the latest figures from the Commerce Department: that deficit shrunk by a healthy 5.5 percent in October. According to this Reuters report, analysts (though not the Commerce Department itself) credit October's West Coast port lockout for this salubrious turn of events. Remember how great that was, when Americans couldn't get the products they wanted to buy from overseas? How much it improved the economic outlook for our nation? Perhaps there might, after all, be more important things than lowering mostly meaningless "trade deficit" figures.