The USA and China don't trade.

I trade with Chinese companies. You trade with Chinese companies. Millions of individuals and companies trade with Chinese companies. Likewise, many U.S. companies trade with Chinese companies and individuals who buy products from them. Because each of these transactions is voluntary, we know that each transacting party considers himself better off by entering into the deal.

The USA and China are abstractions. They are not sentient, acting beings capable of feeling better off or worse off. And accounting statements such as the international balance of payments are completely meaningless for evaluating anyone's well-being. All the efforts being lavished on praising or condemning certain artifacts of this accounting, such as a U.S. "deficit in the balance of trade," are just garbage from an intellectual point of view.

The uses to which politicians, their court economists, and the members of the general public put such accounting statements are bogus, useful for politicians seeking their own ends by bamboozling voters, but utterly without economic foundation.