United States, 1790-1819

Abstract

This questionnaire discusses the U.S. Treasury Department´s annual trade statements from 1790 to 1819. In 1821 these statements were replaced with similar though increasingly more detailed annual accounts-now, for the first time, with official calculations of current import values. 2. Documents The documents considered here are annual accounts, all printed and bound in 2 volumes dated 1832 and 1834 (see American State Papers [ASP] in 9-a below). No synthetic statement of the U.S. trade and services balance was officially produced at the time. Export values at U.S. ports of departure were given for each year; but import values for goods subject to specific duties were not calculated at the time. For each of the years in the period 1795-1801, Mr. Joshua Dobson of the Treasury Department unofficially estimated the total import values at current prices by geographic origins (see Seybert, Statistical Annals..., pp. 266-78); but these values were thought to fall short of the true import values at U.S. ports: see U.S. Congress, "Report... 1819,", p. 393. Modern reconstructions of the U.S. balance of payments for this period include North, "The United States Balance of Payments, 1790-1860", 1960 (U.S. totals only for trade, invisibles, and other flows); and Cuenca-Esteban´s 2014 Working Paper "Financing U.S. External Trade" (here also including breakdowns by foreign countries, foreign countries´ colonies, and other geographic areas).