4 Answers

I am not sure what the questioner meant to ask.  Are you asking about the last time we ran a trade surplus or the last time we were debt free?  Can you clarify for us what you meant.  You do NOT have to start a new question.  Keep it here.

The last time we were debt free was January, 1834 when Andrew Jackson was president.

With regards to trade surplus, it was credited to the Clinton administration.  However, like TSC mentioned above, there are a lot of factors that went into making the determination.  For example, when we talk about trade surpluses, we're mostly talking about manufactured goods rather than raw materials.  Trade surplus means exporting than importing.

13 years ago. Rating: 4
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I'm waiting for all the CLINTONITES to join in on this one.

MYTH: BILL CLINTON HAD A SURPLUS (GWB BLEW IT)

First, there were no federal surpluses. The appearance of a surplus was merely the result of the increased tax revenue from the dot com bubble allowing the Clinton administration to borrow more money from Social Security. Thus, while the public debt went down in the last four years of the Clinton presidency, the intergovernmental debt (mostly to Social Security) went up by an even greater amount, resulting in an increase in the overall national debt in each of those years.

While I could be quite correctly accused of a conservative bias, my argument here is based upon easily verifiable facts out of the published federal government budgets for those years.

Only spin and distraction keeps the great majority of people from simply looking up the budgets from 1997- 2001 and seeing the deficits for themselves.

13 years ago. Rating: 3
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CLINTON, anyway it's spun, then GWB blew it to H*LL, now all wrongs are blamed on OBAMA.

13 years ago. Rating: 1
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I believe it was Ronald Reagan

13 years ago. Rating: 0
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