"Then I looked closer and … yup. The axes are in different scales! While Mexican imports are rising, the U.S. still has a large trade surplus on used vehicles, about $360 m." At the link to the "interesting post" the very first graph puts imports and exports together on the same scale. It's at the top and it's much larger than these two. In context, I see nothing wrong with the presentation. Note also that the presentation is standardized across a variety of goods. A human studying these would become accustomed to using a page wisely.

Bernanke and Frank, Principles of Macro, puts inflation on the vertical. Thoughts? Presumably it was a pedagogical choice with some motivation. "Anchored expectations (of inflation?)"?