China claims U.S. is inflating its trade deficit to stoke trade frictions

China’s Ministry of Commerce says the U.S. is inflating the size of its trade deficit with China to “provoke economic and trade frictions,” arguing in a new report that the true gap is about one-third of what the U.S. claims. By China’s calculations, the U.S. trade deficit with China is just $153 billion – as opposed to the nearly $420 billion deficit reported by the Commerce Department. According to Census data, the U.S. had a $420 billion goods deficit with...