NEW YORK, May 14 (UPI) -- The U.S. trade deficit will likely decrease this year, letting trade add to U.S. economic growth for the first time since 1995, a published report said Monday.
The shift to a more export-driven economy -- spurred in part by a relatively weak U.S. dollar, making U.S. goods and services more competitive in foreign markets -- could add more jobs at home and help the United States bounce back from its slowest economic expansion in four years, The New York Times reported.
The exchange rate weakness is improving U.S. corporate profits from earnings generated abroad, analysts said.
"The old notion that if the dollar's bad, corporate profits have to go down is no longer correct," senior Standard & Poor's analyst Howard Silverblatt said. "There's a lot of growth going on in the rest of the world, and companies have to be there if they want to participate. There's a lot to be sold."
