Trump's favorite trade war scorecard posted its best figure in 6 years in 2019

• The US trade deficit shrank in 2019 for the first time in six years as both exports and imports fell.
• Trump has long expressed frustration with the US trade balance and portrayed it as a scorecard of sorts in his economic battles.
• But experts widely agree that trade balances do not represent any zero-sum win or loss for an economy.
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The US trade deficit shrank in 2019 for the first time in six years as both exports and imports fell against a backdrop of weaker global growth and tit-for-tat tariff disputes.

The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the gap between exports and imports narrowed 1.7% last year. That was the first decline since 2013 and brought the annual deficit to $616.8 billion. The goods deficit fell 2.4% to $886.0 billion.

President Donald Trump has long expressed frustration with the US trade balance and portrayed it as a scorecard of sorts in his economic battles. But experts widely agree that trade balances - which are driven by a host of dynamics from foreign-exchange rates to the amount a country borrows from abroad - do not represent a zero-sum win or loss for an economy.

Tariff escalations, particularly between the US and China, have made trade numbers particularly volatile under the Trump administration.

In 2019, the trade deficit with China fell 17.6% to its lowest level since 2014. The goods deficits with the European Union and Mexico rose to record highs of $177.9 billion and $101.8 billion, respectively.

US exports fell $1.5 billion last year, while imports were down $12.5 billion. The sharp dropoff in imports was likely driven by weaker business investment and the latest round of tariffs on Chinese consumer goods imposed in September, according to Pantheon Macroeconomics Chief Economist Ian Shepherdson.

"Firms appear to have met demand by running down inventory, but that can't go on forever, and imports have now begun to mean-revert," he said. "The core trade deficit is starting to rebound; further sharp increases are coming."