President Trump refused to back down last week on his plans to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum. Calling current U.S. trade deals “very stupid,” Trump has vowed to transform U.S. trade policy by imposing protectionist tariffs and renegotiating trade deals. But Trump’s obsession with the U.S. trade deficit is unjustified, and his trade policies will harm consumers and blue-collar workers — the very people he seeks to help.

Despite Trump’s insistence that our annual trade deficit is $800 billion, America’s actual trade deficit for 2017 was actually only $566 billion, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Why the difference in numbers? Trump only focuses on our trade deficit in goods, and does not take into account our trade surplus in services. Sure, we import loads of industrial supplies and machinery, but we also export business, financial, and information services. Trump refuses to accept that the U.S. economy is now service-based, not manufacturing-based.