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Although market share-loss would seem to be spin-proof...

Not at all. In fact this article does an excellent job of demonstrating how to spin with it.

We can't tell, from this article, whether exports were rising during the period. In other words, we're told that "domestic market share" is going down, but we cannot tell whether sales for domestic manufacturers were going up in the 1997-2000 period... they might have been if gains in export sales were higher than the share losses domestically. That's unlikely, but the point is, the author isn't telling. He's feeding us truth, but it might be a misleading half-truth.

Another way to spin any time series data is to "pick your period." This author wants to tell us about 1997-2000. There is a loss of domestic market share in that period; we must run and tell the King! Well, not so fast. Is that a period when the dollar was strong? Yes. Well, isn't that going to make imports cheaper? Yep. Aren't the foreigners going to get tired of sending us real goods in exchange for little green pieces of paper, and isn't the value of making another little piece of green paper going to decline as a result? Yep, the dollar has been declining since the 1997-2000 period. So those imports that were gaining share in the 1997-2000 period are probably losing it now, because their prices are higher to reflect to the weaker dollar.

What we probably have here is a normal ebb and flow in currency valuations, and an author who wants to talk about the ebb but not the flow. Left alone, these sorts of things tend to take care of themselves; that's what markets do best. On the other hand, there's always some guy who sees the rising part of a sine wave and wants to have a government policy to deal with it. That usually screws things up more than it helps.

Agreed, currency fluctuations explain most of this, as do the transient responses to liberalization in Chineses and East European labor markets.

The biggest spin in the article is in the title. From the numbers, I would call it a "slide," not a "nosedive."

If you look at a graph of the current account deficit it is hard to argue "normal ebb and flow". The current level is the highest ever on an absolute basis and as a percent of GDP. It is moving above the key level of 5%, noted by Greenspan as a threshold above which currencies begin to suffer. Natural market forces should bring down the dollar and make US manufacturers more competitive. However, a falling dollar will encourage repatriation of funds invested in the US markets, causing downward pressure on both the stock and bond markets. It could also generate a self-reinforcing downward spiral as sales of dollars owned by foreigners cause downward pressure on the US$, encouraging more sales, etc. There is no doubt the dollar needs to fall. Managing the process will be very difficult.