March trade deficit widens to $27.58b
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BILL RADKE: The government reported this morning the U.S. trade deficit is climbing again — up 5 percent to $27.5 billion in March. The trade gap had been shrinking lately. Dan Grech tells us, this is back to old times.
DAN GRECH: For years, the U.S. has bought more from the rest of the world than it’s sold. Six months ago, that gap between exports and imports — the trade deficit — reached a record high $60 billion a month. Today, the deficit is less than half that, because the global economy has tanked. Nigel Gault is chief U.S. economist for IHS Global Insight.
NIGEL GAULT: We’ve been looking for a trade deficit decline for a long time. We would have preferred that it would have happened through seeing exports grow faster than imports. Rather than seeing exports and imports both declining, but imports declining more.
Gault says the U.S. economy is still too dependent on foreign goods.
GAULT: There is a long term re-balancing that’s needed in the global economy. We need to see more spending in the rest of the world, and more production growth in the U.S.
Gault says it’s doubtful that can be achieved in the next few years.
I’m Dan Grech for Marketplace.
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