Chart Crime Alert!

By Dominic Pino

Tuesday, August 05, 2025

 

I’d like to nominate this post from Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent for Chart Crime of the Year:

Like all great chart crimes, it starts with a goofy y-axis. The numbers decrease from bottom to top, and the origin is at –60 billion. The numbers also don’t match the title: The U.S. balance of trade is negative, which means the trade deficit is positive.

 

Next, let’s appreciate the x-axis. The chart begins most of the way through 2021, likely because if it actually began at the beginning of Biden’s term as president, it would show the trade deficit at basically the same level as it is today. (In the first quarter of 2021, the trade deficit was $64,705,000,000; the second quarter numbers that just came out show $64,033,000,000.)

 

The really funny parts of this chart, though, are the red and green lines. The “Biden” line begins in the summer of 2023, when Biden had already been president for more than two years. It ignores that the trade deficit was declining from 2022 to 2023, after having increased significantly in 2020 during the pandemic. The actual “trend seen under Biden” was U-shaped, and it had nothing to do with anything Biden did or didn’t do.

 

The “Trump” line is also hilarious because the spike in the trade deficit was caused by Trump. Businesses were stocking up on imported goods in the first quarter of this year because they knew Trump’s tariffs were coming. Then, once some of the tariffs began to take effect, they bought less — the expected effect of a tax increase.

 

Now, the trade deficit is . . . right back where it was in 2023. You can’t take credit for a “significant turnaround” when you were responsible for the turn in the first place.

 

This might be the greatest chart crime on Twitter since the DCCC thanked Joe Biden for a two-penny reduction in gas prices in 2021.