The US Trade Deficit is half oil
We are a very oil dependent country, as Matt Yglesias points out . Note also on the graph how much the US trade deficit improved with the recession: when consumption falls, so does import consumption.
A blog by Jonathan Conning of the Economics Department at Hunter College of the City University of New York. This blog comes back to life when I happen to be teaching a course on trade and/or development but at other times may lay dormant.