You're touching on the Triffin Dilemma [1]. Basically, running a trade deficit is almost inevitable with any global reserve currency. There's not much you can d

You're touching on the Triffin Dilemma [1]. Basically, running a trade deficit is almost inevitable with any global reserve currency. There's not much you can do about that other than ot be a global reserve currency and there's simply no way that's going to happen voluntarily. The US derives too much power from the status of the US dollar. The other issue you've touched on is a mistake that even economists make, which is to conflate the freedom of trade with the free movement of capital. These are two entirely different things. If you buy something, that's trade. If you sell land, that's the movement of capital. You can and should have policy that honors that distinction. About the time the TPP was being rejected, I saw this comic [2], which honestly is worth a read as it explains pretty accurately this distinction. Another angle to this is debt trap diplomacy [3]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma [2]: https://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/ https://economixcomix.com/home/tpp/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt-trap_diplomacy