New Math?

Are these deep intellects cooking the books, pulling a fast one or simply incapable of counting?

This past weekend the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is considering changing the way it calculates U.S. trade deficits - a shift that would make the country’s trade gap appear larger than it had in past years, according to people involved in the discussions.   

The plan that the Trump administration has concocted is to exclude from the calculations goods imported into the United States and subsequently exported to a third country like Canada or Mexico.  

Ahem.  A mainstream economist would tell you that this would artificially inflate trade deficit numbers because it would count these goods as imports when they come into the country but not count the same goods when they go back out as re-exports.  

I consider myself a pretty smart guy for sometimes being a smart ass.  And counting is simple – even if you have to use two hands.   

So, if an automobile is imported to the U.S., and (presuming it remains unchanged) it is then exported to a third country.  Are there not only two (count them - two) choices?  First, count it is an import AND an export.  Or second, as something merely in transit - not counting it as either an import or export.  Counting the import and not the export makes as much sense as counting the export, but not the import.  

Sure, I get the political motivation to inflate the trade deficit.  Anyone taking odds on whether Trump's base catches the math noodling?