By President Donald Trump's math, renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement and other deals will largely pay for the massive tax cuts his Cabinet laid out this past week.
He is likely off by a factor of close to 10 — or more — according to trade and tax economists who say it does not make sense to think of the world in the two-dimensional, money-in-my-pocket or money-in-yours way that Trump did in an interview Thursday.
The president, for example, said that given the current $61 billion annual trade deficit with Mexico, the United States would be better off if the two countries did not trade at all, saying "You'll save yourself a hell of a lot of money."