[TomMckenny]

This means that raising housing costs, interest rates and debt, taxes, and medical costs reduce his figure for foreign imports as a percentage of spending. That increasing the amount spent on those things is “good news” regarding trade deficits.

Unless he is using these numbers to suggest we need to prioritize driving down land prices and rentier practices etc more than worrying about trade imbalance. But this certainly does not seem like his intent.

At any rate, the numbers 11% and 3% are as fictional as the Taylor Lorenz quote but the amount of skepticism differs greatly. This hints more of ideology based beliefs than fact based.