The short answer is: not necessarily. That’s because trade, whether considered globally or bilaterally, isn’t a zero-sum budget game. Despite the president’s rhetoric, America doesn’t always “lose” economic value when it imports more than it exports. In fact, when the United States has a trade deficit, it is often “paid for” by a surplus of foreign investment. That is, the cash flowing into the United States from exports, U.S. Treasury bonds, and other investment assets of foreigners is effectively equal to the amount we pay to foreign countries to import goods and services. That’s the accounting relationship that really matters—not the one between exports and imports, but between so-called trade accounts and capital accounts.

Scott Lincicome, an adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, says it “makes no sense to use the trade deficit as a trade policy scoreboard.” There is near-universal consensus that trade balances have less to do with national trade policy than with macroeconomic factors such as differences between savings and investment, he says. Countries with high savings rates, such as Germany, tend to have trade surpluses. Countries like the United States, where consumers spend a lot, foreign investment is high, and the federal government runs a budget deficit, often have trade deficits.

“If we have low savings rates, high consumption, and a ton of attractiveness for foreign investment, we have a significant trade deficit,” Lincicome says. “It’s always frustrating when you hear the president, in one breath, bemoan the trade deficit, and in the next breath, celebrate all these foreign companies investing in the United States.”