U.S. Trade: On Balance 2004 Was A Very Bad Year

Feb. 10, 2005

The U.S. trade deficit with the rest of the world was $56.403 billion in December 2004, slightly less than the $57.4 billion that economists generally expected. However, 2004 was a very bad year for the U.S., with the deficit in goods and services trade ...

John McClenahen

In December, U.S. exports of $100.171 billion were more than offset by imports totaling $156.574 billion, the U.S. Commerce Department reported on Feb. 10. For all of last year, U.S. exports of $1.146 trillion in goods and services were outpaced by imports valued at nearly $1.764 trillion. The Washington, D.C.-based National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) figures U.S. trade in manufactured goods ran a record $553 billion deficit in 2004. Although U.S. exports of manufactured goods last year showed some of their strongest growth in recent years, the value of imports grew even faster, the business group notes. Frank Vargo, NAM's vice president for international economic affairs, expects the deficit to be smaller in 2005 as the U.S. dollar and other market-determined currencies return to "more normal" values. "A positive sign is that U.S. exports of manufactures grew more rapidly in December [2004] -- though we would not be surprised to see the deficit grow for a few more months."

In December 2004, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $14.264 billion, some $2.367 billion less than in November. For the full year 2004, the U.S. trade deficit with China was $161.978 billion, the largest with any other single country, larger than the $110.005 billion deficit with the 25 nations in the European Union and larger than the $110.832 billion deficit with NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico. "The record $162 billion deficit with China, up $37 billion in one year, shows that China has got to stop contravening market forces and also fully implement its international trade obligations -- including cracking down on product counterfeiting," says the NAM's Vargo.

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.