The Business Week Ahead : SOUTHLAND

Tracking Trade and the Peso: A clue as to whether Southern California exporters are adjusting to the effects of Mexico’s peso devaluation will be presented Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Commerce releases July balance of trade figures. Local exporters who had been reaping big rewards from the North American Free Trade Agreement have been hammered by the Mexican currency crisis that began last December. It has made those exporters’ products 40% more expensive, and economically strapped Mexicans are tightening their purse strings. Mexican trade figures for the first six months of 1995 show a $10-billion reversal: a U.S. deficit of $8.6 billion, compared to a $1.1-billion U.S. surplus for that period in 1994. Hit particularly hard have been Southland farmers, consumer-good manufacturers and wood-products makers. Also to be released Wednesday will be overall U.S. trade figures, and those are unlikely to have been helped by the recent surge in the dollar.