Not Much To Like In U.S. Trade Data

Feb. 10, 2006

Frank Vargo, vice president for international economic affairs at the National Association of Manufacturers, Washington, D.C., notes that U.S. manufactured exports hit a record high of $808 billion in 2005. But that's all that's good about the U.S. ...

John McClenahen

But that's all that's good about the U.S. trade statistics that the U.S. Commerce Department released on Feb. 10. For example, imports of manufactured goods so swamped exports that the U.S. posted a record trade deficit in manufactured goods of $565 billion last year, "a discouraging $77 billion over the previous year," says Vargo.

"Though our economy showed strong export growth for the second straight year, that growth should have been stronger," he claims. "Advanced tech exports haven't even recovered to their level of five years ago," he laments. Citing continuing currency-value and market-access problems with China, Vargo figures that Asian nation accounted for more than $200 billion of the U.S. manufactured goods deficit in 2005.

Meanwhile, the overall U.S. trade deficit for goods and services also reached a record in 2005, Commerce reported. The deficit was $725.8 billion last year, just a little more than $108 billion higher than 2004's $617.6 billion deficit.

And the short-term future is not encouraging. "The situation is likely to become worse in the months ahead," states Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business in College Park. "Crude oil prices are rising again, and an overvalued [U.S.] dollar continues to keep imported cars and consumer goods cheap."

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.