U.S. trade activity in goods and services fell by 0.8% year over year in December, led by a 4.6% slide in imports of goods. The latter is partly down to the timing of stockpiling of goods from China a year earlier in response to tariff threats. Nonetheless the U.S. trade deficit with China fell by 17.6% year over year in 2019 overall, indicating the success of tariffs – the deficit is the Trump administration’s preferred trade metric where a lower figure is “better”. Yet, the overall U.S. trade deficit in goods only fell by 2.5% in 2019 to $853 billion as the result of a growth in the de...