The U.S. trade deficit is not a function of trade policy but of underlying macroeconomic factors in the economy.

See Beware a quick drop in the U.S. trade deficit by Daniel Griswold of Mercatus.

"As he departed Asia yesterday, President Trump tweeted that “The United States has to be treated fairly and in a reciprocal fashion. The massive TRADE deficits must go down quickly!” The president should be careful what he wishes for.

The U.S. trade deficit can shrink for many reasons, some of them good for the United States, some of them not so good. If economic growth accelerates abroad, demand for U.S. exports can rise, reducing our bilateral deficits with those countries experiencing the strongest growth. If Americans start to save more, or the U.S. federal government borrows less, domestic interest rates and the value of the dollar can fall, boosting exports and dampening imports. Those are the benign reasons for a shrinking trade deficit.

In the not so good category of reasons, a U.S. recession can curb domestic demand for imports and foreign demand for U.S. assets, both acting to reduce our overall trade deficit. In fact, if we look back on the past 30 years, there have been only three years in which the U.S. trade deficit in goods has fallen by more than 10 percent compared to the year before. Those years are 1988, 1991, and 2009.
The 22 percent drop in the trade deficit in 1988 came near the end of the long 1980s expansion under President Reagan. The drop was a delayed response to the sharp decline in the dollar that was engineered by central banks from 1985 to 1987. For most of the 1983–1990 expansion, the U.S. trade deficit was growing to what were then record levels.

In both 1991 and 2009, the trade deficit dropped even more quickly, by more than 30 percent in each of those years, but neither year was a happy time for the U.S. economy. Both were recession years, with the trade deficit falling because of plunging domestic demand and investment.

For reasons I’ve explained in a recent paper for the Mercatus Center, the U.S. trade deficit is not a function of trade policy but of underlying macroeconomic factors in the economy. President Trump can sign all the trade deals he wants, but they will not put a dent in the overall U.S. trade deficit. The only proven quick fix for the trade deficit in the past three decades has been a recession."