Friday, November 13, 2009
Trade Gap Numbers
The latest trade gaps numbers were released today. The trade gap widened by $39 billion. This was more than expected but probably reflected rising crude oil prices and imported vehicles from Cash for Clunkers. Because we are importing $39 billion more, money is switched from US dollars into the foriegn currency (kinda) and the dollar should depreciate some. The current drop in the dollar probably does not have much to do with the trade gap though. When compared to the carry trade, which is counted in hundreds of billions, the current trade gap numbers seem trivial! Keep in mind that the dollar is still higher than the when the recession began.
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I was wondering how much the US economy has shrunk relative to the rest of the world since when the rest of the world has started to expand so much (out sourcing and all that), so I found a spreadsheet that had GDP by country for the last 40 years or so, and was pretty suprised by what it showed.
ReplyDeleteAccording to these numbers, the US GDP has been almost completely unchanged as a percentage of the world GDP for the entire past 40 years (~30%)! Most of west Europe (France, Germany, England for example) have declined, Japan rose into the 70s and has declinded since, China has grown a lot, and the USSR (or the contries which were in the USSR) has declined from an impressivly small number to begin with.
I'm shocked they managed to stay with America for as long as they did during the cold war, tbh. Anyways, let me know if you think it's interesting :)
http://notatrick.com/gdp_country_time.ods