Donald Trump has been angry about trade for nearly half a century — and throughout all that time, he’s kept on making the same complaint.

The problem, he says, is that the US has trade deficits with other countries. He believes that, if we buy more from a country than they buy from us, the other country is “beating” us. And he wants to “beat” them instead.

On Sunday, Trump said he’d told foreign leaders seeking tariff relief that “we’re not going to have deficits with your country.” He added: “To me, a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”

To most in the economic and policy communities, this thinking seems downright bizarre in a way that goes beyond typical protectionism.

There’s a range of views on whether the US’s overall trade deficit with the rest of the world is too high, or whether it’s nothing to worry about. There’s also a range of views about whether the US needs to do much more to “decouple” from Chinese manufacturing due to national security concerns, and whether the US should do more to promote manufacturing jobs at home.

Trump’s obsession with bilateral trade deficits — his idea that if the US has a trade deficit with any significant trading partner, it is somehow losing — is the really weird thing. But it’s driving his administration’s policy.

Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariff levels for particular countries were determined,

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