Thursday December 30, 2004

America : Homeland Insecurity

villagevoice.com :

Running below the surface of the year-end self-congratulatory assertions of American supremacy ... are warnings, often ignored, of our decline. The steady loss of the dollar against the euro is one. The spiraling trade deficit is another. And in the past weeks, there were two serious economic signs signaling momentous change, if not outright decline.

The first concerns China's invasion of Canadian oil fields, heretofore a U.S. energy fiefdom. The second came in the form of an all-but-hidden report from the Department of Agriculture that America, the breadbasket of the world, is now a net importer of food.

OIL

If the half-dozen planned projects worth $2 billion go through, Canada, [America's] No. 1 energy supplier, could end up sending as much as one-third of its total oil exports to China. One project would give the Chinese a 49 percent interest in a 720-mile-long pipeline running from Alberta to British Columbia. The Chinese are also eyeing an expansion of a second Canadian pipeline system, and they're discussing gaining an interest in companies with oil leases ...

FOOD

Agriculture, long our largest and most important industry, has heavily influenced American foreign policy. As the push west ended by the turn of the 20th century, we began to struggle to find markets for an increasing food surplus ... but the surplus has suddenly disappeared. For the first time in decades, the U.S. will not turn an agricultural trade surplus, the Economic Research Service reported on November 22. The Agriculture Department couldn't say why. It could not explain how Bush managed to run down a $13.6 billion agricultural trade surplus in 2001 to zero in 2005 ...

(2004-12-30 22:20:55 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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