DESPITE ADDICTION TO OIL, US TRADE DEFICIT IS DOWN IN 2007

The good news is the US trade deficit shrunk in 2007 by 6.2%. The bad news is we passed $711.6 Billion of our equity to the rest of the world. That is equal to giving the following companies to the rest of the world's investors:

Coke
McDonalds
Home Depot
Citigroup
Motorola
Microsoft
AT&T

Most of that deficit is due to oil imports and the price of oil today. We import 11 million barrels of oil per day. At $90 per barrel, then we are sending $990 million American dollars to other countries. That is near $1 Billion dollars a day. That is over $360 billion dollars a year, which is more than half of our trade deficit. If we lowered oil to $45 per barrel, then we could lower our deficit by $180 BILLION PER YEAR. In that case we would keep Home Depot and Citigroup as American owned.
Below is the article about the trade deficit.

Trade Deficit Eased Last Year
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER,
Associated Press
Posted: 2008-02-14 09:34:08
WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite a soaring foreign oil bill and another record deficit with China, the overall U.S. trade deficit declined in 2007 after setting records for five consecutive years. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the deficit dropped to $711.6 billion last year, a decline of 6.2 percent. The trade deficit with China continued to rise, jumping by 10.2 percent to $256.3 billion. That was the largest gap ever recorded with a single country, as Chinese imports surged despite a string of high-profile recalls of tainted products. The Bush administration credits its free trade policies for spurring strong growth in exports while critics contend that even with the lower overall deficit, the imbalance is still nearly double what it was in 2001, the year Bush took office. For December, the deficit fell by 6.9 percent to $58.8 billion, a bigger-than-expected improvement to close out the year. Analysts said the decline in the dollar over the past two years has helped spur strong increases in U.S. exports, with American goods now cheaper and thus more competitive in many overseas markets.
Read the full article at: http://money.aol.com/news/articles/_a/trade-deficit-eased-last-year/n20080214093409990007