By tamping down our outsized appetite for the products of other countries, you combined with a weak dollar to erase nearly one-fourth of the trade deficit, excluding oil, since 2006.

自从2006年以来，你通过堵住我们对于他国产品的惊人胃口，与虚弱的美元一起擦掉了差不多四分之一的贸易赤字，这还没有包括石油。

youdao

Excluding oil, the trade deficit has fallen by almost one-quarter since 2006.

刨除石油，自2006年以来贸易赤字下降了近四分之一。

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Moreover, part of the cost of absorbing past oil-price hikes has been higher consumer debt and a huge trade deficit, both of which make America's economy more vulnerable.

另外，过去一部分石油价格上涨的作用是由消费者负债增加及贸易赤字来吸收，而这两种方式都使得美国经济更加脆弱。

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President Obama is demanding that the final budget cut the federal deficit, reform health care,fund education and reduce U.S.dependence on foreign oil.

VOA: standard.2009.03.21

Once self-sufficient in oil, it has been a net importer since 1993 and today faces a widening oil deficit as demand outstrips supply.

CNN: THE BIG OIL SHOCK

While the Kurdish areas are safer than the rest of Iraq, roughly half the nation's postwar oil production deficit is traced to the very area where the wildcats are drilling.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Thanks to high oil prices, America's trade deficit widened in January (see chart), but if oil is excluded, the deficit is shrinking fast.

ECONOMIST: Exports and the economy