US Trade Deficits: Blame Nixon, Not China

Tags: Taxes and Spending, U.S. History

11/23/2025 Robert P. Murphy

Dr. Robert Murphy explains why America’s chronic trade deficits trace to Nixon’s 1971 gold exit—not China—and how a popular reading of Triffin’s “dilemma” confuses the issue.

Sponsored by Dan Johnson and Randee Laskewitz.

Recorded at the Mises Supporters Summit in Delray Beach, Florida, on October 17, 2025.

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.