One Idea for Trade Balance

In 2005, the US imported 13.71 million barrels of oil per day

At 365 days per year and about $75 dollars a barrel, that's 375 billion dollars of imports. The 2008 current account balance was -569 billion, which means we could reduce our current account deficit by 66% if we didn't need to import oil anymore (note that if we stopped importing oil and oil demand fell, oil prices would drop, but so would our current account balance)

That doesn't count oil-containing goods. I don't know whether we import or export more oil-containing goods, but I'd bet that we export goods with greater pricing power than we import, because of the worldwide strength of US brands.

In other words, if you don't want an import-certificate policy (one of my first posts, here), another way to stem the massive trade deficit would be to transition the electricity and transportation supply to solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear and natural gas (and hypothetically coal, but that's worse visavis Co2).

Much more secure energy supply (our enemies don't need to supply us), cheaper over the long term, avoids global warming, and also prevents massive inflation and foreign ownership of US goods.