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Trade Boom

THE STRONG growth in the U.S. economy reported this week for the last quarter of 2006, and the year as a whole, had a lot to do with burgeoning American exports. In the first 11 months of 2006, they reached $1.1 trillion, a 13 percent increase over the same period in 2005. Though the U.S. trade deficit is still huge, recent figures show exports growing at three times the rate of imports; sales to China are up by a third. Moreover, U.S. exports to the handful of countries with which there are free-trade agreements are booming disproportionately: Though Mexico, Canada, Chile and other free-trade-pact partners make up only 7 percent of the non-U.S. global economy, they are buying 42 percent of the American goods and services sold abroad....