[SergeiRachmaninov]

So very roughly the EU has same size economy and same population as the United States but we run an 850 billion dollar trade deficit (2006) and EU is in trade balance. No wonder the € is rising and the $ is sinking.

I heard on the BBC just an hour or so ago (yea, yea, I know that a chorus here will ridicule the messenger and discredit the message) that Germany recently displaced the U.S. as the world's largest exporter. None of this makes me want to embrace Eurosocialism, though.

There is a sad take-home message in all of this: The U.S. no longer stands astride the world like an economic collossus (if you will forgive a flamboyant cliché). No amount of flag waving indignation can change this reality.

[dennisw]

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2007_MONTH_03/6-22032007-EN-AP.PDF

Germany trade surplus = €169 billion

[rb22982]

According to what I’ve read Germany has long been the world’s largest exporter and the US has been gaining strongly on it. In the beginning of ‘06 Germany had 1.13 trillion in exports and the US had 1.03 trillion.