Unforeseen consequences of an emerging economic recovery

It almost seems as if every good piece of news about the U.S. economy must be balanced by an equally troubling fact of economic life.

And so while we have been buoyed in recent weeks with various reports of a growing recovery, we are now confronted with the latest trade deficit statistics.

The numbers for March, the most recent month available, show U.S. exports rose 3.2 percent during the month to a seasonally adjusted $147.9 billion. But imports increased by almost the same percentage, rising to $188.3 billion.

The result was a trade deficit of $40.4 billion for the month. That’s an increase of 2.5 percent, compared to the prior month, and it’s the highest trade imbalance in dollars in 15 months.

The figures show that as the economy improves, people are spending more money. Unfortunately they’re spending more on imported goods than the rest of the world is spending on U.S. goods.

Much of that imbalance is attributable to the high cost of imported oil, which points to the need for a multi-pronged, long-range energy policy. As recently as a few weeks ago, part of that policy was almost certainly going to be an increase in offshore drilling. Now, not so much.

But a big part of the deficit is also attributable to our continuing penchant for purchasing more foreign-made goods — from automobiles to electronics to widgets — from the rest of the world than they buy from us.

China wins

And the largest beneficiary of our largesse remains China, which in March bought $7.4 billion worth of goods from the United States, while the United States bought $24.3 billion from China. That’s a rate of more than 3-to-1. As bad as that sounds, it is not as bad as 2007, when the ratio was nearly 5-to-1.

Meanwhile, China, showed a rare trade deficit of $7.24 billion in March (obviously China’s buying a lot of stuff from other nations, just not the United States). But preliminary figures for April show that China jumped back on top with a trade surplus of $1.7 billion with the rest of the world.

Last week, an editorial on this page discussed the absolute need for the Obama administration and Congress to work on reining in the federal budget deficit, which soared to $82.7 billion in April.

Equally important is the need for a trade policy that puts the United States and its trade partners on more equal footing.

It’s an important part of the equation because a trade imbalance drags down U.S. growth. At the same time, U.S. budget deficits are being sustained in a significant way by our trading partners, who use the outflow of dollars to buy U.S. debt.

It is a codependency that is dangerous for all concerned, especially at a time such as this, when the nascent world economic recovery is being threatened by the European Union’s efforts to bail out Greece.

Everyone has to demonstrate more discipline. In the United States, that applies equally to government, which must tighten spending, and individuals, who should be more careful shoppers and more conservative users of expensive, imported energy.