Time was when China recording a record trade surplus would have thrown all of Washington into a tizzy: stern words of disapproval from the Treasury, cries of woe from rustbelt congressmen, rousing calls for currency market counter-intervention from the more hotheaded think-tankers, that kind of thing.

Well, China did precisely that 10 days ago and while no one was exactly delighted, it’s not the biggest thing to have happened in US politics so far this year. I’m not going to speculate on exactly why Washington reacts to events any more than I can predict what our toddler is going to do when told it’s bedtime. But it’s worth noting that, while the US analysis of its deficit continues to be wrong-headed, at least it’s not using trade and current account deficits as the main reason to further ramp up its trade war.

Current account balances are one of those things where it’s best to call in the macroeconomists, who correctly look at the savings-investment relationship inside a country rather than at external trade policy. You can argue that China ran surpluses for years because the government subsidised and promoted exports while discouraging imports with dense thickets of regulation, but so did India, which has had structural deficits for decades.