USBIC report: Rising January trade deficit due to worsening performance in manufactures, high-tech
By Manufacturing Business Technology Staff -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 3/11/2008 2:57:00 PM
Washington—The overall U.S. trade deficit in January rose 0.59 percent—from $57.86B to $58.20B—pushed up not only by higher oil prices but bigger trade deficits in manufactured goods and high-tech products.
A 15-percent cratering in U.S. exports to economically booming China again underscored Washington’s bipartisan failure to combat Beijing’s predatory trade policies.
“Having refused to pass a strong China currency bill this year, the Democratic Congress is rapidly joining the Republican White House as part of our China trade problem, not part of its solution,” says Alan Tonelson, a Research Fellow at the U.S. Business and Industry Council. “Meanwhile, the Democratic and Republic presidential candidates remain clueless about the nation’s biggest trade challenges, heatedly debating NAFTA and ignoring the far greater damage inflicted by China’s mercantilism.”
America’s oil deficit jumped 11.93 percent in January—from $31.35B to $35.09B—while the trade gap in non-oil goods shrank 7.85 percent, from $34.78B to $35.09B. Yet the chronic manufacturing deficit surged 7.25 percent, and the volatile high-tech goods deficit soared 25.63 percent.
The deterioration in manufacturing was led by a 3.40-percent decrease in U.S. exports, from $73.73B to $71.22B. Manufactures imports, however, inched up 0.55 percent, to $117.81B. High-tech exports and imports both plunged by 10.80 percent and 7.14 percent respectively.
Due largely to the big fall-off in U.S. goods exports to China, America’s merchandise trade deficit with the People’s Republic rose another 8.09 percent in January, from $18.79B to $20.31B. U.S. goods imports from China rose 1.86 percent, from $25.69B to $26.17B.
By contrast, America’s longstanding merchandise trade gaps with narrowed dramatically with the Eurozone and Mexico, and slightly with Japan. A 5.36-percent drop in U.S. goods imports from the Eurozone drove a 16.30-percent shrinkage in the merchandise trade deficit with the world’s largest economic unit, while a 16.09-percent percent rise in U.S. goods exports to Mexico keyed a 21.04-percent fall in that U.S. deficit with its southern neighbor. The longstanding goods trade gap with oil-rich Canada, however, jumped by 25.97 percent, to $5.87B.
