48 diminution of our offshore activities. In the 1960's, we decided that we wanted to rebuild our international stance, hut we had great trouble finding the handle, if you will, and we were not too successful in establishing ourselves around the world as well as we would have liked, but the experience we gained in the sixties together with the emphasis we gave this under our strategic planning system in the seventies has brought us to this current stance. We have now very effective affiliates in many nations around the world and these have been extraordinarily helpful to us in terms of supporting the export business from the United States, although our Nation ran a deficit last year, the General Electric Company's exports exceeded its imports by better than $1.5 billion just to give you some idea of how significant our exports are. We have made a very concerted effort in these last several years to build our international representation, to establish sales offices in the LDC's, to build up the capability of some of these inter-national affiliates, to respond to the legislation that was passed that in effect closed borders in many areas to us so that we had to manufacture locally. We've tried to work in a constructive way with many governments around the world in