Top Economist Says America’s Winning Trade War Despite $70.3 Billion In Deficit: US Runs Enormous ‘Stuff Surplus’

In a provocative challenge to traditional economic anxieties, top economist Justin Wolfers is reframing the widening U.S. trade gap not as a fiscal failure, but as an enormous physical “surplus” that signals a historic boom in American material wealth.
The ‘Stuff’ Surplus
While the U.S. Census Bureau announced a sharp rise in the goods and services deficit to $70.3 billion for December 2025, Wolfers argues that the public is looking at the ledger backward.
“The U.S. has an enormous trade surplus with the rest of the world,” Wolfers stated in a recent viral analysis. “It has a trade surplus in stuff.”
Wolfers explains that what is technically labeled a deficit is simply a massive influx of physical goods—cars, electronics, and industrial supplies—exchanged for “pieces of paper,” or U.S. dollars.
“We retained more stuff from the rest of the world than we sent to the rest of the world,” he noted, adding rhetorically, “doesn’t stuff make you just as happy as pieces of paper?”

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