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WASHINGTON — America’strade deficit in goods with the restof the world rose to its highest lev-el in history last year as theUnited States imported a recordamount, including from China,widening the deficit to $891.3 bil-lion and delivering a setback toPresident Trump’s goal of narrow-ing that gap.

The increase was driven bysome factors outside Mr. Trump’scontrol, like a global economicslowdown and the relativestrength of the United States dol-lar, both of which weakened over-seas demand for American goods.But the widening gap was also ex-acerbated by Mr. Trump’s $1.5 tril-lion tax cut, which has been large-ly financed by government bor-rowing, and the trade war he esca-lated last year.

It is a case of textbook econom-ics catching up with some of Mr.Trump’s unorthodox economicpolicies. Economists have longwarned that Mr. Trump’s tax cutswould ultimately exacerbate atrade deficit he has vowed to re-duce, as Americans, flush with ex-tra cash, bought more importedgoods.

His trade war with Beijing alsowidened the gap: Stiff tariffs onChinese goods helped slow Chi-na’s economy, crimping Americanexports, which declined nearly 50percent in December from thesame month a year before.

“All countries run trade deficitswhenever they consume morethan they produce,” said KimberlyClausing, an economist at ReedCollege in Oregon. “And when weborrow to finance tax cuts, like wedid with the Tax Cuts and JobsAct, we make these imbalancesworse.”

The trade deficit is the differ-ence between how much a coun-try sells to its trading partnersand how much it buys. It generallyincludes both goods and services,though Mr. Trump has focused al-most exclusively on the deficit ingoods. He has long boasted thathis trade policies would reducethat gap, which he views as ameasure of whether partners likeChina and the European Unionare taking advantage of theUnited States, a diagnosis feweconomists share.

Instead, in a year in which Mr.Trump imposed tariffs on steel,aluminum, washing machines, so-lar panels and a variety of Chinesegoods, the overall trade deficitgrew 12.5 percent from 2017, ornearly $70 billion, to $621 billion,the Commerce Department saidWednesday. Although the UnitedStates recorded a trade surplus inservices, the trade deficit in goodswith the European Union andMexico grew more than 10 per-cent as imports rose faster than

U.S. TRADE DEFICITUNDER PRESIDENTBULGES TO RECORD

FAILING A TRUMP METRIC

Tax Cuts and TextbookEconomics Catch Up

to His Strategy

By JIM TANKERSLEYand ANA SWANSON

Chinese heavy-lift cranes, purchased for the Port of Tacoma. The United States trade deficit in goods reached $891.3 billion in 2018.TED S. WARREN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Continued on Page A8

SAN FRANCISCO — Socialnetworking has long been predi-cated on people sharing their sta-tus updates, photos and messageswith the world. Now Mark Zucker-berg, chief executive of Facebook,plans to start shifting people to-ward private conversations andaway from public broadcasting.

Mr. Zuckerberg, who runs Face-book, Instagram, WhatsApp andMessenger, on Wednesday ex-pressed his intentions to changethe essential nature of social me-dia. Instead of encouraging publicposts, he said, he would focus onprivate and encrypted communi-cations, in which users messagemostly smaller groups of peoplethey know. Unlike publicly sharedposts that are kept as users’ per-manent records, the communica-tions could also be deleted after acertain period of time.

He said Facebook wouldachieve the shift partly by inte-grating Instagram, WhatsAppand Messenger so that usersworldwide could easily messageone another across the networks.In effect, he said, Facebook wouldchange from being a digital townsquare to creating a type of “dig-ital living room,” where peoplecould expect their discussions tobe intimate, ephemeral and se-cure from outsiders.

“We’re building a foundation forsocial communication alignedwith the direction people increas-ingly care about: messaging eachother privately,” Mr. Zuckerbergsaid in an interview on Wednes-day. In a blog post, he added thatas he thought about the future ofthe internet, “I believe a privacy-focused communications plat-form will become even more im-portant than today’s open plat-forms.”

Facebook’s plan — in which thecompany is playing catch-up tothe way people are already com-municating digitally — raises newquestions, not the least of which iswhether it can realistically pull offa privacy-focused platform. TheSilicon Valley giant, valued at$490 billion, depends on peopleopenly sharing posts to be able totarget advertising to them. Whilethe company will not eradicatepublic sharing, a proliferation ofprivate and secure communica-tions could potentially hurt itsbusiness model.

Facebook also faces concernsabout what the change means forpeople’s data and whether it wasbeing anti-competitive by knittingtogether WhatsApp, Instagramand Messenger, which historicallyhave been separate and operated

Users’ PrivacyIs New Focus,Facebook Says

Move to Secure SystemCould Slow Revenue

By MIKE ISAAC

Continued on Page A17

WENDELL, N.C. — YoselinWences grew up with a constantrefrain from her parents, immi-grants from Mexico who became alandscaper and a cook.

“The mind-set was, ‘Don’t belike us,’” she said. “ ‘Don’t get mar-ried early. Don’t have childrenearly. Don’t be one of those teenmoms. We made these sacrificesso that you can get educated andstart a career.’”

She followed that advice, andnow, at 22, Ms. Wences, a junior atNorth Carolina State University,will soon become the first memberof her family to graduate from col-lege. When asked about children,Ms. Wences replied that for her,they were years away.

“Probably around 34 or 35,” shesaid. “That age range seems idealto me.”

As fertility rates across theUnited States continue to decline— 2017 had the country’s lowest

rate since the government startedkeeping records — some of thelargest drops have been amongHispanics. The birthrate for His-panic women fell by 31 percentfrom 2007 to 2017, a steep declinethat demographers say has beendriven in part by generational dif-ferences between Hispanic immi-grants and their American-borndaughters and granddaughters.

It is a story of becoming morelike other Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Hispanics in the United

States today are born in this coun-try, a fact that is often lost in thenoisy political battles over immi-gration. Young American-bornHispanic women are less likely tobe poor and more likely to be edu-cated than their immigrant moth-ers and grandmothers, accordingto the Pew Research Center, andmany are delaying childbearing tofinish school and start careers,just like other American-bornwomen.

Hispanic Americans’ Birthrate Dives as Women Pursue InroadsBy SABRINA TAVERNISE

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WASHINGTON — She pausedto maintain her composure as shespoke. She recalled the attacks,and how her reports of them werehandled. The despair, she said, al-most made her leave the military.

Senator Martha McSally, Re-publican of Arizona and the firstwoman in the Air Force to fly incombat, told a hushed Senatehearing room on Wednesday thatshe had been raped by a superiorofficer, one of multiple times shewas sexually assaulted while sheserved her country.

“I thought I was strong, but feltpowerless,” Ms. McSally said dur-ing a Senate Armed Services sub-committee hearing on sexual as-sault in the military. “The perpe-trators abused their position ofpower in profound ways.”

In sharing her experience —

pride in her historic military serv-ice, betrayal over the assault anddetermination to help find a solu-tion — the junior senator from Ari-zona offered one of the most pow-erful testimonies to date in thegrowing and heated debate onCapitol Hill over how to adjudicateclaims of sexual assault in the mil-itary.

Ms. McSally, a former memberof the House who lost an ArizonaSenate race last year and thenwas appointed to the seat onceheld by Senator John McCain, didnot offer any details about the as-saults or name the senior officer.

She said she did not immedi-ately report the attacks becauseshe “didn’t trust the system at thetime.” Later, when she began talk-ing about them, she said she was

Air Force Pioneer Turned SenatorSays Superior Officer Raped Her

By EMILY COCHRANE and JENNIFER STEINHAUER

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WASHINGTON — Representa-tive Hakeem Jeffries, an unflap-pable Brooklynite tasked withkeeping the fractious House Dem-ocratic caucus on message,wanted to spend Wednesday talk-ing up the party’s all-in-one votingrights and ethics reform bill mak-ing its way to a vote this week.

Instead Mr. Jeffries, a top lieu-tenant of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s,stood uncomfortably in front of aspecially printed “For the People”placard, sideswiped by a singleanti-Israel comment from a fresh-man representative from Minne-sota, Ilhan Omar — and pepperedby reporters’ questions about howMs. Pelosi planned to punish thenewcomer without provoking acivil war.

So it has gone for Ms. Pelosi andher leadership team, which isshowing some rust after eightyears in the minority. The first guncontrol bills in 25 years clearedthe House last month with littlenotice, swallowed whole by theHouse Oversight and ReformCommittee’s hearing with Presi-dent Trump’s former lawyer andfixer, Michael D. Cohen.

Democrats LetOwn MessageTrip Them Up

By GLENN THRUSHand SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Continued on Page A15

At many offices, creative — or maybejust cheap — people are making mealsfrom the free snacks on hand. Above, an“office mezze platter.” PAGE D1

THURSDAY STYLES D1-8

Yes, There Is a Free LunchSanta Anita suspended racing after aspike in horse fatalities, and the sportfaces a crisis, Joe Drape writes. PAGE B7

SPORTSTHURSDAY B7-10

Deaths Spell Trouble for RacingMario Batali, facing accusations ofsexual misconduct, has been bought outby his restaurant partners. PAGE B1

BUSINESS B1-6

Celebrity Chef Exits

Brooklyn prosecutors dropped over 40charges against two detectives accusedof sexual assault, citing “credibilityissues” with the accuser. PAGE A19

NEW YORK A19-20

Case Against 2 Officers Erodes

The Milwaukee Brewers hope theiraggressive use of relief pitchers will getthem to the World Series. PAGE B8

Looking for Plenty of ReliefElon Musk’s shift to online-only salesraises new questions about the car-maker. Shares have sunk. PAGE B1

Tesla Swerves on Strategy

Hip-hop artists gave Supreme Courtjustices a primer on rap in urging them tohear the case of a rapper imprisoned formenacing the police in lyrics. PAGE A17

Rhyme and Reason

A wave of knife crimes has many inBritain questioning the effects of aus-terity cuts to police forces. PAGE A4

INTERNATIONAL A4-8

British Debate as Knifings Rise

To cater to wealthy people amassingWarhols and Murakamis, a number ofdevelopers are designing condo towerswith art collections in mind. PAGE F10

SPECIAL SECTION: DESIGN

Home Is Where the Art Is

Gail Collins PAGE A23

EDITORIAL, OP-ED A22-23

SEOUL, South Korea — Whenthe armored train carrying KimJong-un back from his summitmeeting with President Trump inVietnam reached Pyongyang Sta-tion at 3:08 a.m. Tuesday, throngsof flower-waving North Koreansgreeted their leader with “bound-less emotions and excitement,”the country’s state-run mediasaid.

But Mr. Kim returned homeempty-handed — without relieffrom international sanctions —prompting the question of what hewill do next: Particularly, will heresume his nuclear and missilebrinkmanship to reassert hisleverage?

The revelation on Wednesdaythat North Korea had started re-building the partly dismantled fa-

cilities at Tongchang-ri, where thecountry tests technologies for itsintercontinental ballistic missiles,raised the specter that Mr. Kimwas returning to his provocativebehavior.

But experts on North Korea sayMr. Kim may be boxed in: He re-turned home without sanctionsrelief amid strong signs that theNorth Korean economy is continu-ing to contract. The deepeningeconomic trouble may force thecountry to return to the negotiat-ing table.

In restarting operations at its

missile technology site, North Ko-rea is seeking “to increase itsleverage before the next round oftalks,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a profes-sor of North Korean studies atDongguk University in Seoul.

“I don’t think the North will re-sume missile tests anytime soonand risk the resumption of UnitedStates-South Korea joint militaryexercises and even the talk of amilitary option by the Ameri-cans,” he said.

Mr. Trump expressed his dis-pleasure at the prospect of newtesting. “I would be very disap-pointed if that were happening,”the president said at the WhiteHouse on Wednesday when askedabout reports on the North Kore-an missile facilities. “It’s a veryearly report, and we’re the onesthat put it out. But I would be very,very disappointed in Chairman

Sanctions’ Burn May Force Kim Back to the TableBy CHOE SANG-HUN

Kim Jong-un left Vietnam on Saturday without the sanctions relief he had sought to take home.VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Signs of Work at MissileTesting Site Come as

Economy Withers

Continued on Page A8

Michael Cohen tried to back up claimsthat Trump lawyers helped alter a falsestatement he gave to Congress. PAGE A12

NATIONAL A9-18

More Documents From Cohen

VOL. CLXVIII . . . No. 58,259 © 2019 The New York Times Company THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019 Printed in Chicago $3.00

Mostly cloudy. A bit of snow central.Some rain south. Highs in middle20s to upper 40s. Snow central andnorth. Tonight, 2-4 inches total inspots. Weather map is on Page A24.

National Edition