The year of the exporter.(international)

There's no denying it: the U.S. economy is in the toilet at the moment. Layoffs are slicing their way across major industries, gross domestic product (GDP) growth has slowed to a snail's pace and the persistence of the subprime mortgage mess has transformed it from crisis to virus. It's almost like there's no safe haven left.

There was a time when the rest of the world had an air of nonchalance about the health of the U.S. economy. It was an attitude that nations' financial systems were independent and big enough to carry on without being bogged down by U.S. affairs. But when the markets soured in Europe and much of Asia, it was the United States' consumption of imports that helped those countries stay afloat. The dollar went farther and the U.S. took advantage of that.

Now the shoe is on the other foot.

The U.S. economy is nestling itself comfortably into a downturn as the dollar slips in value and uncertainty is whipped on by an ailing housing market. There is continued debate as to whether the hard landing of a recession is probable or if it's a current reality. In either case, most economists are predicting a rebound in late 2008 and early 2009. There is still plenty of doom-and-gloom for those with a thirst for it. Though, the bigger picture of the current economic environment doesn't mean that business is dead or crawling to a standstill, it just means that opportunities have shifted.

"The bottom line is, with this credit crunch that's going on in the United States, it's a good time to be an exporter," Buddy Baker of Atradius Trade Credit Insurance told attendees at the recent FCIB Roundtable in New York. "In the last economic downturn that really impacted Europe and a good part of Asia, we carried everyone out of it. We had a booming economy while everyone else was down and we wound up being a consuming economy, buying products from the rest of the world."

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It's Not All Bad News