ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, April 18, 1997 TAG: 9704180072
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
A mix-up between the Commerce Department and the Customs Bureau had created a $1.2 billion overstatement.
America's trade deficit in February narrowed to $10.4 billion after setting a record the previous month, the Commerce Department said late Thursday, after correcting a sizable error that had overstated the trade gap.
The department had originally reported that the February deficit was $1.2 billion larger - $11.6 billion - before discovering a major miscalculation of oil imports.
Commerce Undersecretary Everett Ehrlich called the size of the error unprecedented and blamed it on miscommunication between his agency, which compiles the trade statistics, and the Customs Bureau, which gathers the raw data.
The Customs Bureau, in an effort to get a handle on late reports of oil shipments coming into the country, asked its agents to send in not only the current month's data but data from previous months.
However, the Census Bureau, the arm of Commerce that tabulates the trade statistics, was not alerted to separate the old data from the current month, resulting in a $1.2 billion overstatement of oil imports on a seasonally adjusted basis.
Embarrassed Commerce officials said it would take at least a day to come up with corrected tables for all the information contained in the 29-page trade report.
Based on the corrected information, the department said the February imbalance was an 18 percent improvement from January's deficit of $12.7 billion.
The January gap between imports and exports had been the largest since the government switched to tracking goods and services flows on a monthly basis.
Even with the lower figure for February, the deficit so far this year is running at an annual rate of $139 billion, up sharply from last year's $114.3 billion deficit.
Economists blamed the deterioration on two major factors - how strong the U.S. economy is compared to other nations', and the strength of the dollar, which is making foreign goods cheaper for U.S. consumers.
The two-month total for China was up 37 percent from a year ago, and the deficit for Japan for the year is 11.3 percent higher.
U.S. automakers are complaining that the strong dollar is allowing Japanese competitors to regain market share in the United States.
Total U.S. exports of goods and services in February were up 4 percent to an all-time high of $73.5 billion.
Imports, after correcting for the oil reporting error, totaled $83.9 billion, also a record.
LENGTH: Medium: 58 linesby CNB