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BPEA | 1971 No. 1

The Balance of Payments in 1970

1971, No. 1


IN THE FIRST ISSUE OF THIS JOURNAL, Lawrence Krause asked whether the trade balance was tracking its usual relationships to demand changes in the United States and abroad. This question was posed in the face of concern about the possibility that the prolonged U.S. inflation in the late 1960s had permanently affected U.S. competitiveness. As Krause noted, the year 1970 would test whether the basic relationships had changed. In this report on 1970 balance-of-payments developments, I extend Krause’s question to (a) the basic balance, defined as the current account plus the net direct investment account, and (b) the balance on private financial capital, that is, private capital flows other than direct investment.