Economic Risks Remain For U.S. Manufacturers' Exports

Aug. 4, 2005
Although U.S. manufacturers' export businesses are "not in any imminent danger," a combination of "a great measure of uncertainty" in currency exchange rates and "questionable growth" in the economies of major U.S. trading partners means "downside risks ...

Although U.S. manufacturers' export businesses are "not in any imminent danger," a combination of "a great measure of uncertainty" in currency exchange rates and "questionable growth" in the economies of major U.S. trading partners means "downside risks remain," says Cliff Waldman, an economist at Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, an Arlington, Va.-based business and public policy research group.

On a compound annualized basis, the U.S. dollar will fall an average 6% against the currencies of other industrialized countries through 2006, projects an alliance report released Aug. 4. The dollar is expected to remain flat against developing-country currencies during the rest of this year and then fall by 5% during the first half of 2006 and by 2.5% during next year's second six months.

Waldman figures economic growth among industrialized nations, a group that includes Canada, Japan and 15 European countries, will slow from 2.8% this calendar quarter to 2.45% in the third quarter of 2006. Economic growth among developing countries, a group that includes China, India and Mexico, is expected to decline from 3.2% during the second half of this year to 2.5% in the third quarter of next year.

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.
      

 

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