Actually you, like most of us, have a trade deficit with the grocery store and the movie theater, and a trade surplus with your employer. Which one is more enjoyable to have?
My point is that reducing it entirely to "did I gain or receive cash-money from this?" isn't a particularly useful framing.
Nations have interests and there’s a real conversation to be had that a country should ensure it has strategic industries so its existence is never at the whims of another.
Then let that be the reason for tariffs rather than the bullshit argument of trade deficit = taking money.
Maybe some smart people, somewhere, would hypothetically have a strategy. Those people currently hold no power. It's not "political theater", it's our ACTUAL politics. It's just so ridiculous that it looks like theater. Which just means the situation is worse than you originally thought.
Examples here: https://www.hoover.org/research/when-trade-wars-become-shoot...
You need to trade your labor for money, and you need to trade your money for food. I would argue that there isn’t a huge difference in the fundamental nature of those two trades. Framing them in terms of “trade deficits” is pointing out which direction money is moving in each instance, but fundamentally they’re both just trades.