Oil Imports

Report Outline
Focus from Home and Abroad
U.S. Oil Policy Development
Factors in Future Policy
Special Focus

Focus from Home and Abroad

Foreign Pressure on U.S. to Cut Imports

At the economic summit meeting in Bonn in July, President Carter pledged to raise oil prices in the United States to world levels and to reduce U.S. oil imports. Carter's pledge was strongly praised by the other summit participants — Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing of France and Prime Ministers Takeo Fukuda of Japan, James Callaghan of Britain, Pierre Elliott Trudeau of Canada and Giulio Andreotti of Italy. In return, the six foreign leaders agreed to try to stimulate their economies in order to improve markets for U.S. exports.

For months preceding the summit meeting, the foreign leaders had denounced the Carter administration's failure to curb the U.S. addiction to imported oil. America's continued dependence on foreign oil has been blamed for the nation's sagging balance of trade, the slide of the U.S. dollar in world money markets, rising worldwide inflation and a host of other economic ills.

Whether President Carter can deliver on his pledge is a matter of speculation at home — and of intense interest to America's trading partners abroad. Given the problems the president has had in trying to move his national energy plan through Congress, some observers have concluded that he may have overstated what the United States can actually accomplish. In 1977 imports averaged 8.7 million barrels a day, providing almost half of the oil the country consumed. Oil imports decreased 13 percent in the first seven months of 1978, but many energy analysts regard that as a temporary situation and foresee a resumption next year of the long-term rise in imports.