ABSTRACT
In 1971, for the first time since the creation of the Bretton Woods System, the United States experienced a balance of trade deficit; in 1973 and 1975, it reported small surpluses, and it has reverted to ever-increasing deficits since. 1 While it is of course true that oil comprises a substantial percentage of imports into the United States, 2 and that this basic commodity figures as a central factor in the global political economy, the explanation for what has become an annual and increasing United States trade deficit is more complicated. In the “non-petroleum merchandise trade,” for example, the amount of imports increased from $71 billion in 1975, to roughly $128 billion in 1978, or an increase of slightly over 7eighty percent. By contrast, the petroleum imports during the same period increased by fifty-nine percent. 1 Thus, the United States trade balance, which went from a surplus of slightly more than $9 billion in 1975, to a deficit of almost $45 billion in 1978, 2 must be explained by more than the oil import factor.
