The United States international trade deficit rose 43.1 percent from February to March this year. The trade deficit rose by $15.5 billion—from $35.9 billion to $51.4 billion. Economists had predicted that it would rise by less than $6 billion. There was a 7.7 percent increase in imports compared to a 0.9 percent increase in exports.

The trade deficit is the highest in 6½ years. Analysts had predicted gross domestic product growth for the first quarter would be 0.2 percent. These findings mean that the U.S. gdp probably decreased during the first quarter of 2015.

In the long run, it is important for nations to have a positive balance of trade because it is a major means by which money is imported. For almost 40 years, the U.S. has been running trade deficits. As billionaire investor Warren Buffett has wrote back in 2003, the country’s net worth “is now being transferred abroad at an alarming rate. A perpetuation of this transfer will lead to major trouble.”

Ultimately, trade deficits are not sustainable. No economy can continue to lose billions per year in trade and continue to thrive. Eventually the trade deficit will weaken the economy, and, sooner or later, the currency.

Herbert W. Armstrong forecasted that a coming crisis in the Western world’s monetary systems would bring about the collapse of the American and British peoples. The U.S.’s soaring trade deficit could hasten that crisis.