"America's trade deficit climbed to an all-time high of $12.1 billion in February as the imbalance with Japan surged by 21 percent and U.S. merchandise exports fell to their lowest level in a year. ... For the first two months of this year, the deficit is running at an annual rate of $142 billion, far surpassing last year's nine-year high of $113.7 billion."

WASHINGTON - "The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record $13 billion in March with imports of autos, consumer goods and foreign food all climbing to the highest levels in history.

America's trade gaps with Japan, China and other Asian countries widened dramatically as the Asian crisis crashed onto America's shores, underscoring the political problems facing the Clinton administration.

The Commerce Department report today showed that the March (1998) deficit in goods and services was up 7 percent from a $12.2 billion imbalance in February, marking the fourth straight monthly increase." ...

For March, America's deficit with Japan jumped 8.8 percent to $5.8 billion, the worst showing in five months as (U.S.) imports of machinery and telecommunications products jumped.

On May 15,1998, Clinton praised Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto for putting forward a credible $125 billion package of tax cuts and increased government spending to boost the Japanese economy." (Translated - to boost Japanese trade for the Japanese household - while U.S. trade exports continue to diminish dramatically, because the U.S. no longer makes (or has capability to make) products other nations need or want.)

Palicki NOTE:The stated Clinton position is an absurd position that cannot ever be accomplished - lower taxes with a simultaneous increase in government spending? - without Japan increasing its money supply? Increasing money supply without increased output of manufactured product is a de facto devaluation of currency¹. The ratio of total national money supply over total national output of manufactured product is a natural law relationship of M/P (ratio of total national money supply divided by the total national population headcount. Product output (volume or amount) is always directly proportional to population headcount.
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¹Devaluation of currency is the same as inflation of money and has the same meaning or effect - that is, reduction of purchasing power of currency.

Increased government spending can be paid for only by one of two means -

1. deliberate inflation of currency by increasing national money supply, or
2. by increase of taxes on the laboring wage earner and the business structures providing the means of employment.

Both means have been imposed simultaneously on the U.S. population for the last fifty years. Periodic increase of interest rates (cost of borrowed money) are applied by the private banking authority simply to delay the common effect of a continuing increase of prices (wholesale and retail). Through these 'trade deficit' reports, you are seeing the destructive effects from application of these means to 'govern', or 'mis-manage' the U.S. national household for the past fifty years.

"The Commerce Department reported today that the April deficit was 9.5 percent higher than the March imbalance of $13.2 billion, the previous record.

In a further sign of America's deteriorating trade performance, the government also reported today that the deficit in the widest measure of trade, the current account, widened in the January-March quarter to an all time high of $47.2 billion. ...up from the previous record, a $45 billion gap in the fourth quarter last year (1997).

The widening gap in the current account,...measures not only goods and services but also investment flows and foreign aid, ... investment flows and foreign aid reflected the same adverse trend as the monthly trade figures.

For the first four months of this year, (Jan - Apr 1998), the U.S. deficit in goods and services is running at an annual rate of $149 billion, on track to set a record this year, far surpassing last year's imbalance of $110.2 billion.

The rising deficits have given ammunition to critics of Clinton's open-trade policies and have so far stymied what was to have been a key economic (in a management sense) priority of his second term, creation of a Western Hemisphere free-trade zone and free trade agreements with Pacific countries."

Those two singular Acts of Congress removed constitutional authority from the U.S. Congress to control commerce and regulate trade, and transferred that authority to an un-elected private banking authority, called the 'Federal Reserve Banking Authority'. That authority gives direction to the Office Of President (connected to that private banking authority by those two singular acts of Congress).

NOTE 2: As of June 1998, the annual U.S. trade-deficit rate of $149 billion translates into $149 billion worth of industrial tooling, manufacturing and textile jobs moved out of the U.S. - to China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Mexico (and elsewhwere)

- replaced by minimum-wage service jobs, or servant jobs less than $10.00 an hour, in servant retail sales, restaurant, resort, and casino housekeeping jobs. So you might have full-employment, but a majority of family incomes of the wage-earning workers are less than the $40,000 per year poverty level (as of 1997 numbers) for a family of three (Mother, Father and Child).

[That poverty level income number will increase as growth of Total U.S. Money supply (units of currency) exceeds the natural rate of growth (from natural birth and immigration) of the Total U.S. population headcount.]

Inflationary policy and practice on a global scale, a practice by all nations on Earth, is driven by national inabilities to contain the burden costs of their respective governments. Herein is the root of causes of all financial chaos and disorder - at the root of causes of all social and political disorder - resulting in a chronic and systemic perturbation and destruction of national sovereignties, private businesses, and the lives of all people on the face of the Earth.

"Reflecting global economic turmoil, the deficit in the broadest measure in nations's trade performance jumped 20 percent in the April-June Quarter to $56.5 billion.

The current-account deficit, reported today by the Commerce Department, rose from a record $46.7 billion in the first quarter. The increase puts the nation on track to register a deficit above $200 billion for all of 1998. ...the worst since the government began tracking the data just after World War II. Last year's deficit was $155 billion. ...The deficit in goods alone hit a record $64.8 billion in the second quarter."

"The deficit...of trade shot up to an all-time high of $234.4 billion in 1998 as farmers and manufacturers were battered by the global economic crises, resulting in the first drop in U.S. goods exports in 13 years.

The Commerce Department reported today...imbalance in the nation's current account swelled by 50.4 percent from 1997's deficit of $155.2 billion. ...Exports of American goods fell by 1.2. percent to $671.1 billion last year,..first drop in this category since 1985. ... Two-thirds of the decline came from falling farm sales...one-third was ...result of...drop in demand for manufactured goods."
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"...drop in demand for manufactured goods..." ???
Says who? Not a drop in demand - the U.S. doesn't manufacture anything that other nations can't make for themselves, over and above everything they make and export to the U.S. The U.S. no longer has a manufacturing capability to make product for its own.

LOOKING FOR AN ELECTRIC GENERATOR FOR Y2K?

The U.S. national inventory of gas-powered electric generators was wiped out by the first week of Thanksgiving 1998, due to a series of natural disasters - droughts, fires and hurricanes, from Oklahoma and Texas down through Florida, Central America and the Carribean. All generators on order were back-ordered. Generator suppliers like Coleman and Generac, in response to queries for availability said, don't call us, we'll call you.

That inventory was wiped out because no one, except Generac, perhaps, makes generators in the U.S. - EMPHASIZING HERE DEMONSTRABLE PROOF OF THE DESTRUCTION OF AN INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING AND MANUFACTURING CAPABILITY IN THE U.S.

A snide remark is in order here. Call the White House and ask them to use their influence with the Chinese Gov't (or Taiwan or Mexico) to increase their production output of generators or generator parts and assemblies, pay for them using funds from the IMF, and give those generators away to those areas of the U.S. hardest hit by those disasters. (And you deny we have become a socialist welfare state and a beggar nation?) It doesn't get better.
END OF NOTE OF EXAMPLE:

See also Trade Deficit Reports for bar chart display of this data.

The graphics under these links display growth or expansion (whichever term you prefer) of Capital Investment and Trade Deficit for a period from Dec '97 through Dec'98. The Fact here is: Capital Investment¹ and U.S. Trade Deficit follows deliberate inflationary expansion of U.S. National Money Supply.

Return to Introduction for U.S. Foreign Trade Deficit Reports

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