Global Investor: Don't Count America Out.

Byline: Mickey Levy

A more balanced global growth picture means that the enormous U.S. trade deficit has reached a plateau and is set to recede, perhaps substantially. Ditto the U.S. current-account deficit. That will mean less dependence on the American consumer as an engine for global growth, and less U.S. borrowing from abroad. But it will also mean more reliance on a new kind of growth engine: the American producer and exporter.

By now, the catalysts behind the shift are fairly well known. Rapid import growth, fueled by U.S. consumer and business spending, has been dampened by recent Federal Reserve interest-rate hikes. Japan, Germany and other European economies, enjoying a healthy new economic momentum, are now growing faster than the United States. Recent structural improvements in these countries have lifted their potential growth rates. Along with the weaker U.S. dollar, these trends will continue to dampen demand for foreign imports to the United States and increase the appetite for U.S. exports.

The trend debunks one of the most common misperceptions about international trade: the notion that the United States has lost its competitive edge, and that there is shrinking demand for American exports. Not true. In the past three years, U.S. exports have grown more than 8 percent per year--more than double U.S. real GDP growth--and the United States remains the world's largest exporter of goods and services.

An analysis of what the United States exports--and who buys those exports--explains why American companies will stay competitive, and supports my favorable view that the U.S. economy will rebound and resume 3 percent growth.

Nearly half of all U.S. exports--about $750 billion--are capital goods and industrial supplies, like machinery, computers and a wide array of durable goods and materials used in production processes around the world. As global economies build out their infrastructures and expand productive capacities, demand for these products will remain dominant.

The United States also is the world's largest exporter of business services, particularly financial services. I expect that U.S. financial institutions will remain on the leading edge of global technological innovation and product development. Also, the weakness in the dollar can be expected to boost the U.S. travel industries.