That’s true (analogy - you can find out how much the clothes you’re wearing weigh by weighing each piece individually or weighing yourself wearing them and subtracting your weight).

But you can’t change the process mid way through your measurement. We don’t have a way of measuring “consumption of domestic products” so we just measure consumption and subtract the imports afterwards.

X-M is an accounting trick, but when you’re using this model you have to stick with it.

The idea that imports were deferred causes this accounting trick to show its weakness. (Presumably, looking at the data for all of 2025 when it’s available will “low pass” the deferred imports)