What everyone else wrote is technically true.
But like any numbers or any statistics, the devil is in the details, and context is everything. Right now, the whole deficit thing is a political weapon to score political points. No one has the “real” numbers – all of them are cooked for craven political purposes. And there is massive controversy over what columns should be added up to even come up with a figure of deficit and surplus.
For example, if Detroit starts building a car, then sends it to Windsor for some additional work, but the tires are placed on the car in Toledo, is that an import or an export? Or both?
The bottom line is that without a strictly defined set of criteria of what is to be counted, there is nothing but confusing political claptrap. Which is what we have today,