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Given this worldwide web of surpluses and deficits in 200 countries’ trade accounts, how could we possibly run our trade policy so that every flow balanced, even if for some reason we thought that was a good idea?

We have a big surplus with the U.K. but a big deficit with Germany. How would we reduce both? We could put export tariffs or physical quotas on what we send the Brits. Or we could let them tax or ration imports from us. We could do the reverse with the Germans. Or at least we could once Britain’s out of Europe. While it’s still in, the EU can’t have different border rules for one member country and not another.

Canada gets reassured Da Boss likes us. But what says he can’t change his mind?

But world trade is like the Michelin Man: squeeze it here and it bulges there. (It is, as we economists say, a complex general equilibrium system.) Suppose we worked on all our non-zero trade balances, introducing micro-level trade frictions to cut this flow or boost that one. Suppose in the end that eliminated our overall deficit. What would that do to the dollar? Probably boost it. And what would that do to the trade deficits we’d just got rid of? Probably bring them back, since a higher dollar would make our goods less competitive.

It might be nice if we had a separate loonie for every country we trade with that could adjust up or down as a surplus or deficit required. But of course there’s only one loonie. Even if it adjusted to produce balance overall, how could it produce balance on all our accounts at the same time?

A trade regime in which governments are not generally hands-off but are required instead to intervene at a micro level to adjust trade flows up or down on a country-by-country basis? Making their trading partners offers they can’t refuse? Conducting stick-ups at their borders? Operating on their Dons’ whims (in the U.S., literally on Don’s whims)?

If you’re not enormously worried — bigly, yugely, fantastically worried — you haven’t been paying attention.