All Things in Moderation

There is quite a lot in the news about the Euro crisis. I’m skeptical of claims that a Euro implosion would be disastrous for the U.S. economy. First off, Greece being ejected from the Euro doesn’t mean the end of the Euro. Just that Greece was brought in with an overvalued currency and with the full knowledge that the books were cooked. The U.K. was ejected from the Euro’s predecessor 20 years ago. That event propelled a dramatic economic recovery from disastrous interventions to stabilize its currency. It’s also the primary reason Labor was in government from 1997 to 2011. Even with larger knock on effects, the Euro zone is not a significant growth market for U.S. exports and an economic slow down might have a knock-on effect for materials prices. The U.S. performance this year tracked fairly well with oil. I’m likely wrong about this, but I don’t see this as our greatest challenge.

The most interesting piece that I read was a graphic in today’s Post illustrating U.S. exports to Europe. As I expected, exports to the southern tier countries aren’t that great. I expected the bigger EU countries (U.K., France, Germany) to make up the lion’s share. The shocker to me is that the largest market for us is Benelux (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg), accounting for roughly $55B of U.S. exports per year, well ahead of the U.K. at $42B. One might quibble with me combining the three countries, but our Benelux exports rival those to Germany and France combined ($58B). For the record, here’s the top 10.

Incidentally, there is only one country that shows zero imports or exports to the U.S.–Yemen. Unless you included postal bombs.

BB

Filed under: EU, euro, free trade | 7 Comments »