IMF Says U.S. Reclaimed Status as Top Exporter

The United States regained its spot as the world’s leading exporter last year after losing it to West Germany, the International Monetary Fund reported Sunday.

The IMF said U.S. foreign sales were worth $364 billion for 1989, compared to $341.4 billion for West Germany. Japan was third with $273.9 billion.

West Germany, which toppled the United States from the No. 1 trade spot in 1986, and Japan both had trade surpluses, however, while the United States still had a deficit of $128.9 billion, down from $137.1 billion, according to the IMF’s trade calculations.

The deficit is due to the fact that the United States is also the world’s greatest importer and its imports also grew rapidly, to $492.9 billion from $459.5 billion.

The West German surplus, now the world’s largest, amounted to $71.4 billion, and Japan’s was $63.9 billion, the IMF reported.

The Commerce Department, using different means of calculating the trade imbalance, has put the 1989 merchandise trade deficit at $109 billion.

Of six major countries, the United States had the largest increase in foreign sales, 12.5%, the IMF said. West German exports also rose, by 5.6%. Since East Germany also is an important trader, a reunified Germany may take over the top place as exporter.

As a group, the 22 countries the fund classifies as industrial increased their buying faster than their sales last year, with many of the imports apparently from the Third World.

Led by the United States, they imported $2.2 trillion worth of goods in 1989, up 8.7%. Their exports also rose, to $2.1 trillion, but that was an increase of only 6.5%--resulting in a widening of their overall trade deficit.

West German imports totaled $270 billion.

Japan imported $210 billion worth of goods in 1989, up from $187 billion the year before. The country has been under heavy pressure from the United States and other trading partners to buy more of their industrial goods.

For the other 130 countries reported by the fund, which does not include the Soviet Union, figures for the year were not complete. The fund’s monthly IMF Memorandum said their overall trade surplus in the first three quarters of 1989 rose to $11.7 billion from $8.8 billion in the same period of 1988.

Latin American countries were an exception in the Third World. Struggling to find cash to meet the interest on their debts, they increased their surplus to $13.1 billion from $10.8 billion for the nine-month period in 1988.

The fund noted that Latin America was reporting record inflation: a price increase of more than 365% in the July-September period over the same period in 1988. The largest rate was Nicaragua’s 4,267%; that is, prices were more than 42 times the year before.

Nicaragua’s rate affects a population of fewer than 4 million, however. Brazil’s 144 million people suffered from 1,287% annual inflation. Brazil accounts for a third of the economy of all Latin America.

In Asia, many countries are under pressure like that put on Japan to buy from the West. As a group, Asian Third World countries increased their excess of imports to $9.9 billion from $2.6 billion for the first nine months of 1989.

South Korea, one of the few that has already reported for the entire year, still had a $1-billion surplus of exports in 1989, down from nearly $9 billion in 1988. Others, including China, contributed to the increasing trade deficit of the group by selling less than they bought.

The fund said Asian countries as a whole nevertheless continued to show the fastest growth in both imports and exports.