Sunday, February 17, 2008

Oil Imports Fuel Trade Deficit

Department of Commerce Oil Imports Fuel Trade DeficitSoaring high prices for foreign oil fueled a 2007 US trade deficit of $711.6 billion according to the US Department of Commerce.

Imports hit a record at $2.33 trillion, up 5.9 percent from the 2006 level. That increase was fueled by a 9.5 percent jump in oil imports which hit an all-time high of $331.23 billion. The average annual price for crude oil rose to a record of $64.27.

With oil prices rising even higher at the start of 2008 to nearly $100, expect the foreign oil bill to cause further trade issues and misery for the United States economy.

Source: US Department of Commerce

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2 comments:

Michael A. Gregory said...

I wonder how long we can continue to do that as a nation before our standard of living starts to decline because we are sending all our money to other countries.

Bill Anderson said...

@mus302

Well we've been doing it
for decades so far. During that time our SoL has increased. While I would love to see our oil import drop far enough to remove us from the top ten, I don't see any correlation with standard of living. Even 350B among a 15 trillion dollar economy is relatively small change (about 2.3 percent). We see roughly half of that in increases in one or two quarters last year. The US Federal Government wastes much more than our oil deficit every year. Given that we actually get something out of the oil we produce and get nothing out of wasted government taxation I'd say that is where any SoL problems would come from well before oil.