Sherrod Brown: “Today, new trade figures were released by the Department of Commerce. The news continues to be bad, as our trade policy…”

“Today, new trade figures were released by the Department of Commerce. The news continues to be bad, as our trade policy continues on its merry way. We saw the numbers--$20 billion trade deficit in May, the most recent number they released--$20 billion, leaving us for the year, at this point, a $96 billion trade deficit with China. That is a 15-percent increase over last year. That means we are buying $96 billion more from China than we are selling to China, and that is just through the first 5 months of 2007. To understand a billion dollars, which is pretty hard to do, if you had a billion dollars and you spent a dollar every second of every minute, of every hour, of every day, it would take 31 years to spend $1 billion. So our trade deficit with China, so far this year, up through the first 5 months since January 1, is $96 billion. Our trade deficit with the whole world, just in the month of May, was $66 billion.”