Alongside his promise of 25 million jobs, Trump has also said he can get America growing at 4% a year again. That would be almost double what Obama achieved. The U.S. hasn't seen consistent 4% economic growth since the tech boom of the late 1990s.
Of course they matter. Trade deficits arise when we import more than we export. Easy said. It's a tad bit more complicated. When we keep incurring these deficits, year after year, we use our domestic currency (the $) to pay for those imports. This results in our trade partners getting a considerable supply of those $.
In 2016, the total U.S. trade deficit was $502 billion. That's because it imported $2.712 trillion of goods and services while exporting $2.209 trillion. The deficit is higher than in 2013 when it was $478 billion. That's because the dollar strengthened 25 percent in 2014 and 2015.