CNS’ Jeffrey Buries The Lead On U.S.-Russia Trade So Biden Doesn’t Look Good

Part of CNSNews.com editor Terry Jeffrey’s anti-Biden crusade in the runup to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was blaming Biden for trade deficits between the U.S. and Russia. He effectively did that again in a July 7 article:

The United States ran a merchandise trade deficit of $1,049,100,000 with Russia in the month of May, according to data released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.

During May, the United States sold $77,400,000 in exports to Russia and purchased $1,126,500,000 in imports, resulting in the trade deficit of $1,049,100,000.

The last time the United States ran a monthly trade surplus with Russia was in December 1995, according to Census Bureau data. That month, the United States exported $256,700,000 in goods to Russia and imported $227,300,000, resulting in a surplus of $29,400,000.

Jeffrey is violating normal journalistic style by writing out the full numbers with all the zeroes instead of using words like “million” or “billion”  because he thinks they look bigger and make his biased point. But Jeffrey buried the lead, which he waited until the fourth paragraph to get to:

Russia invaded Ukraine in February of this year. That month, the United States ran a trade deficit of $2,080,300,000 with Russia. In March, the U.S. trade deficit with Russia increased to $2,645,200,000. In April, it declined to $1,993,600,000. In May, it declined again to $1,049,100,000.

That’s right — the U.S. trade deficit dropped by half between March and May. But that number would make Biden look too good, and Jeffrey, as a highly biased right-wing activist masquerading as a journalist, can’t have that. So Jeffrey spent the rest of his article rehashing trade numbers from 2021.

The news on the trade front got even better in June, according to the Census Bureau data Jeffrey cites — the trade deficit dropped another 40 percent, to $603 million. Again, that makes Biden look good, so Jeffrey did no story at all about it. Good news for Biden is no news at CNS.