ever, has been included in services, while all expenditures of religious and charitable institutions are included in unilateral transfers, even if they involve the purchase of fixed assets. Investments of the United States abroad are assets; foreign investments in the United States are liabilities. The principle for determining credits or debits has already been stated. Item IV, short-term capital and gold, includes all capital movements other than long-term, i. e., movements of bank deposits and other claims payable on demand or with an original maturity of less than 1 year. Until 1919 the gold entry in the balance of payments. was the net international movement of gold in all its forms. Beginning in 1919, however, the gold entry is the net change in the monetary gold stock, including stabilization fund holdings. Thus the gold stock is considered a special kind of international asset, all increases in which are debited and decreases credited in the balance-of-payments statement. Offsetting entries occur in the merchandise account: If the gold stock increases because domestic production exceeds domestic nonmonetary use, such excess is treated as an export or credit; if domestic consumption exceeds production, the excess is treated as an import and may be considered to be that part of the imported gold used as merchandise and not added to the gold stock. This was the case in the years 1943-46. The algebraic sum of the merchandise entry and the monetary gold entry, it should be noted,, still equals the net international gold transactions. 1 The net long-term capital transactions figure for 1933 includes $40,000,000, and that for 1934 includes $30,000,000 representing the net transfer of funds in security arbitrage operations. These transactions cannot be divided between domestic and foreign securities in these years, TABLE 39.-International transactions of the United States, 1914-1947-Continued [In millions of dollars] III. Excess of receipts (+) or payments (-), total. IV. Net inflow (+) or outflow (-) of funds on gold and short-term capital account, total. A. Net increase (-) or decrease (+) in Source: International Economics Division, Office of Business Economics, Department of Commerce. Data regarding the period July 1, 1914-Dec. 30, 1918, were rearranged from the Review of Economic Statistics, Supplement, Preliminary Vol. 3, June 1921, p. 201. TABLE 40.-Reexports of foreign merchandise from the United States, 1914–46 [In millions of dollars] Reexports of foreign merchandise are included in item I A-1, but are offset by also being included in imports, item II A-1. The amounts involved in the respective years are shown in table 40. Reexports are exports of goods of foreign origin which have not been changed in form or value during their stay in this country. Such goods would have been entered into the import statistics and again in the export statistics, in the latter case classed as reexports. Exports of sugar of Cuban origin, which has been further refined in this country, would be changed in value and therefore classed as exports of domestic products. On the other hand, Canadian wheat passing through this country en route to Europe would be considered as intransit trade and not entered in either the import or the export statistics. Often nondutiable goods merely passing through the country are included in the statistics as imports and as reexports. Tables 41 and 42, which follow, contain data regarding total United States exports and imports for the years 1914, 1932, 1939, and 1946 and similar data by economic classes for the years 1932, 1939, and 1946. |