The trade deficit between the US and other countries continues to grow:
The gap between what Americans import and what they export widened to another record in 2006, totaling $763.6 billion, the Commerce Department said today. It was the fifth year in a row that the trade deficit broke through its previous record, which in 2005 stood at $716.7 billion. nytimes.com (Hat tip to Turkana over at Great Rift Valley.)
www.worldmapper.org
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (University of Sheffield) and Mark Newman (University of Michigan)
It's an easy enough concept to understand in theory, but sometimes it's difficult to picture just how significant a statistic that the trade deficit actually is. Luckily for us, we have our old friend the cartogram to give us some perspective.
Cross-posted at TIP :: ::
Quick Background on Cartograms: Readers of my past diaries know that for the first 6 years of the 21st century, Republican stalwarts were fond of carrying around phony baloney maps like this one, that exaggerated GOP support across the country. The problem is that it gives a geographical representation of statistics that are actually about people. Some hotshot cartographers from the University of Michigan came up with a simple and effective way to more accurately portray the data, yielding a truer red/blue (or purple) divide like these two do:
Electoral Cartograms: Phallic Florida Edition
In essence, cartograms present numeric information while keeping a degree of geographic accuracy. The geographic land areas of the map are resized in order to represent a particular subject of interest.
Let's say we wanted a visual picture of the world's population. The typical world map which represents land mass looks like this one:
Map of the World - www.worldmapper.org
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
To portray countries based on their population, the map would be reformulated into a cartogram like the one shown below. Note the differences between the regular map and the population cartogram.
See how big China is? And India? Now look at how small Australia is. That's because it's population is much lower proportionally than its land mass.
Total Population Cartogram (2002) www.worldmapper.org
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
And see that giant purple island on the upper right? That's the tiny island nation of Japan. Cool stuff eh?
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Ballooning US Trade Deficit:
Okay then, this diary was supposed to be about the trade deficit so let's get back to the New York Times article:
A growing trade deficit acts as a drag on overall economic growth...China was again the country that had the most out-of-balance trade with the United States...Americans imported more from China than any other country, purchasing $287.8 billion worth of goods and services in 2006. That dwarfed the value of American exports purchased by the Chinese, which was $55.2 billion last year.
Okay, I don't know about you, but numbers like that sometimes make my head go fuzzy. Let's look at some cartograms...and while they are not for the same year, the picture is crystal clear. This cartogram represents Toy Imports by country:
Toy Imports by Country
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
The United States is the number one importer of toys in the world, indicative of a high availability of disposable income in the US. Europe also imports a good amount of toys. For more juicy info check out all the toy import info at www.worldmapper.org
Okay then: anyone want to guess who the number one Toy Exporter in the world is?
Toy Exports by Country
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
Remarkably, toys (including sporting goods) make up approximately 1% of the world's exported goods. Now toys are a fun example to look at, but lets look at a big one: oil. The NYT Article continues:
Much of the increase in the trade deficit last year was because of high oil prices, and some economists noted that falling oil prices could help shrink the deficit this year.
Here's the cartogram for Petroleum Importers (again note how big Japan is):
Refined Petroleum Imports - www.worldmapper.org
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
And here are the petroleum exporters:
Refined Petroleum Exports - www.worldmapper.org
© Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan)
And just in case we forgot, the good folks at worldmapper.org point out that "[t]he Middle East has the highest net refined petroleum exports...this region is where most extraction occurs and has the largest known oil reserves."
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Acknowledgments: For more fun world cartograms, check out the WorldMapper site. It's way cool. (Warning: you cannot use their images without permission! But they have cool maps you can print out for personal use.)
The Electoral Cartograms are courtesy of The University of Michigan and cited under a Creative Commons License. Many thanks to U of M's Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman!
All the world maps and cartograms are © Copyright 2006 SASI Group (Univ. of Sheffield) & Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan) and are included here under expressed written (well, emailed) permission of the folks at www.worldmapper.org.
Finally, I'd like to give a tip of the hat to DrReason, who first turned me on to the WorldMapper website in this comment made in one of my earlier diaries.