President Donald Trump incorrectly stated Thursday that the US has a trade deficit with Canada.

While the US does have a trade deficit in goods with Canada, it more than makes up for it on the services side.

The tweet shows that Trump is focused on the goods-producing side of economy, even though services are much more important to the US.

In a tweet on Thursday, President Donald Trump repeated a claim that the US maintains a trade deficit with Canada, while data from the US Trade Representative shows that not to be the case.

While the fact may be off, Trump's insistence on repeating the line reveals a fundamental piece of the president's economic thinking — that only the part of the economy that makes stuff is important.

The US overall has a trade surplus with its neighbor to the north, but it falls to a deficit when it comes to just goods. The difference is made up with America's robust services exports in thing like travel and financial services.

This isn't the only time Trump has homed in on the "tangible" side of the economy. Since the campaign, Trump has also focused his economic message on the goods-producing or manufacturing part of the economy, such as automakers and coal miners.

Even when discussing trade, Trump seems to be focused on trade deficits as it relates to goods. For instance, Trump repeatedly claims that the US trade deficit is $800 billion a year. This is only true, however, when focusing just on goods. The actual trade deficit when taking into account both goods and services is $566 billion.

The problem with focusing on the good-producing parts of the economy is that the US economy is dominated by the service side.

Just look at the development of the US labor market. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 86% of all Americans are employed in service industry jobs, a number that has grown from 63% 50 years ago and a low of 56% in 1942. At the same time, the percentage of jobs in manufacturing decreased from 39% in 1943 to just 8.5% today.

Even looking globally, services is becoming the predominate focus of the economy. According to the World Bank, just shy of 69% of the value of global GDP was added by the service sector while just a hair above 27% came from the industrial sector. In fact, the share from services jumped from 58% in 1995, while industry fell from 34%.

For the US, the World Bank determined that services made up an even greater amount of GDP value at 79%.

To be fair, there is a pay discrepancy between the two types of jobs. The February jobs report from the BLS showed that the average hourly earnings for goods-producing jobs hit $23.71 while average weekly earnings hit $983.97. For service sector jobs, average hourly earnings were only $22.12 and weekly earnings came in at $718.90.

While there are a slew of reason behind the drop-off, from automation to union membership rates, the difference in pay likely explains some of Trump's focus on goods-producing jobs.

But as manufacturing and goods production becomes more automated, attempting the boost employment in these sectors — thereby reversing a more than half a century trend — may prove difficult. Everyone from liberal economist Paul Krugman to GOP Sen. Ben Sasse warned about the automation trend since Trump took over.

Perhaps instead, Trump's focus could be on improving working conditions and pay for those people in the service industry.