Monthly U.S. Trade Deficit Reaches Record Depth

Nov. 10, 2005

Hit by higher energy prices and hurricane-related port problems, the U.S. goods and services trade deficit with the rest of the world deepened to $66.1 billion in September, the most recent month for which data are available, the U.S. Commerce Department reported on Nov. 10. The record monthly deficit was far worse than the $61 billion deficit that economists generally expected for September and $6.8 billion more than the revised $59.3 billion trade deficit in August.

U.S. exports valued at $105.2 billion in September were more than offset by imports totaling $171.3 billion.

For the first nine months of 2005, the U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world was $529.8 billion.

In September the U.S. trade deficit with China was $20.1 billion, the largest deficit with any single country. For the first nine months of 2005, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $146.3 billion.

"In large measure, the [overall U.S.] trade deficit remains stubbornly high because the overvalued [U.S.] dollar pushes up imports of inexpensive manufactures and handicaps U.S. exports of durable goods and high-end services -- and this situation is likely to become worse in the fourth quarter [of 2005] and in 2006," says Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business in College Park.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Labor Department reported that its import price index for October declined three-tenths of a percentage point on falling oil prices. The index had climbed 2.3% in September. The department's export price index rose six-tenths of a percent in October, two-tenths of a point less than the eight-tenths advance in September.

About the Author

John McClenahen | Former Senior Editor, IndustryWeek

John S. McClenahen, is an occasional essayist on the Web site of IndustryWeek, the executive management publication from which he retired in 2006. He began his journalism career as a broadcast journalist at Westinghouse Broadcasting’s KYW in Cleveland, Ohio. In May 1967, he joined Penton Media Inc. in Cleveland and in September 1967 was transferred to Washington, DC, the base from which for nearly 40 years he wrote primarily about national and international economics and politics, and corporate social responsibility.

      McClenahen, a native of Ohio now residing in Maryland, is an award-winning writer and photographer. He is the author of three books of poetry, most recently An Unexpected Poet (2013), and several books of photographs, including Black, White, and Shades of Grey (2014). He also is the author of a children’s book, Henry at His Beach (2014).

      His photograph “Provincetown: Fog Rising 2004” was selected for the Smithsonian Institution’s 2011 juried exhibition Artists at Work and displayed in the S. Dillon Ripley Center at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., from June until October 2011. Five of his photographs are in the collection of St. Lawrence University and displayed on campus in Canton, New York.

      John McClenahen’s essay “Incorporating America: Whitman in Context” was designated one of the five best works published in The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies during the twelve-year editorship of R. Barry Leavis of Rollins College. John McClenahen’s several journalism prizes include the coveted Jesse H. Neal Award. He also is the author of the commemorative poem “Upon 50 Years,” celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Wolfson College Cambridge, and appearing in “The Wolfson Review.”

      John McClenahen received a B.A. (English with a minor in government) from St. Lawrence University, an M.A., (English) from Western Reserve University, and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University, where he also pursued doctoral studies. At St. Lawrence University, he was elected to academic honor societies in English and government and to Omicron Delta Kappa, the University’s highest undergraduate honor. John McClenahen was a participant in the 32nd Annual Wharton Seminars for Journalists at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. During the Easter Term of the 1986 academic year, John McClenahen was the first American to hold a prestigious Press Fellowship at Wolfson College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.

      John McClenahen has served on the Editorial Board of Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies and was co-founder and first editor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown. He has been a volunteer researcher on the William Steinway Diary Project at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and has been an assistant professorial lecturer at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C.