Why the trade deficit is getting bigger — despite all of Trump’s promises

Cutlery in mid-production at the Liberty Tabletop factory in Sherrill, NY, on Nov. 8. The company is the last stainless steel flatware maker in the US.Credit: Heather Ainsworth, The Washington Post

Greg Owens wants to sell his company’s stainless-steel flatware to customers in Britain and Australia. Only one thing stands in his way: the strength of the U.S. dollar.

Owens’s company, Liberty Tabletop, the last stainless steel flatware maker in the United States, produces its distinctive offerings in a century-old brick building in Sherrill, N.Y. Each time Owens converts the sales price of competing products in those overseas markets into dollars, he flinches.

“When I’m at a 20 or 30 percent disadvantage versus my competitors’ prices, I have no chance — and that’s pretty much what’s happening,” he said. “If that were somehow to be corrected, it would go a long way to helping us be more competitive.”

View the complete November 27 article by David J. Lynch on The Washington Post website here.