Wondering why the current U.S. recovery looks so recession-like? One big reason is the also- recovering growth of the U.S. trade deficit.

Although the U.S. economic recovery remains sluggish at best, the trade deficit is back to levels not seen since the financial crisis peaked more than three years ago.

Although President Obama and many TV pundits keep talking about an improving economy, a look at the real numbers does not support their happy talk.

If domestic industry is staging such a stunning comeback, how come so many high value sectors keep running such big and rapidly growing trade defcits?

Democrats from Barack Obama on down are attacking Republicans for suggesting that the laws of supply and demand be applied to soaring gas prices: Increase supply by increasing US production and gas prices will fall. The president claims it just ain't so: oil prices are set by international markets. However, witness OPEC's years of constant fiddling with supply to affect price or the current separation of the prices for West Texas Intermediate from North Sea Brent and a rational person would conclude that more exploration and drilling would almost certainly lower gas prices in the US. American consumers are paying dearly for the President's genuflection to his environmental supporters in the form of cancelled deep-water drilling, other drilling restrictions, and the veto of he Keystone pipeline, while he throws billions of their tax dollars at his friends' bankrupt solar energy firms.

The President's plan to bring manufacturing back to the United States ignores the trade policy decisions largely responsible for sending it abroad.

The Eurozone is in fact a rigged game, designed to benefit Germany and a few other rich northern European countries at the expense of the Mediterranean countries. Since the deficit countries can't devalue their currencies per Eurozone rules, which is the classic economic prescription for persistent trade deficits, the southern countries will be stuck in a never-ending downward spiral. The way forward is to leave the Eurozone as quickly as possible, but that is just the beginning of the solution to Greece's problems, which will only be solved over time and with much pain.

The U.S. trade deficit jumped more than 10 percent in November, and the 11-month total for slow-growing 2011 has already topped the full-year total for faster-growing 2010. Let's not overlook the new monthly record shortfall for high tech trade, either.

President Obama is staging another of his "I'm listening to business" events at the White House. This time the topic is insourcing, the transfer of jobs back to the United States from overseas. This process generally involves larger manufacturers selecting American companies as subcontractors, thus displacing their foreign subcontractors. The term insourcing can also be used to refer to bringing back to the United States a plant previously moved overseas. Insourcing is fine as far as it goes, but that is not far enough. Lowering the corporate tax rate, rolling back health care and other mandates, a border tax to offset VAT export rebates used by 150 plus of our trading partners, reasonable regulations, and penalties for foreign currency manipulation are all better means to achieve the growth of industry domestically. These steps require major effort on multiple policy fronts. A cleaner simpler way to stimulate the growth of domestic manufacturing would be to declare a balance of payments emergency under the WTO's Article XII and institute a tariff sufficient to bring industry to the United States. Once our trade deficit came into balance, because we made the goods we consume -- and put Americans to work in the process, the tariff could be lifted.

As if you needed it, yet more evidence that America's leaders and media remain clueless about trade, manufacturing, and economic recovery.