Plenty of Americans blame unfair competition from Asia, and especially China, for their country's gigantic current-account deficit. Yet the group of countries with the world's biggest current-account surpluses is no longer emerging Asia, but exporters of oil. As the price of their chief resource has climbed— this week it hit a new nominal record price of more than $70 a barrel-these economies have enjoyed a huge windfall. From an American point of view, the rise in oil prices has explained half of the widening of the current-account deficit since 2003, a bigger share than that accounted for by China.
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